


Alignment

by airdeari



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: (flexes typing muscles) these guns sink ships, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Coming Out, Dissociation, F/F, Gen, Internalized Homophobia, Miscommunication, Panic Attacks, Psychosis, i.e. the edelgrid is sad, just a lil bit. just because dimitri, lots of character interactions that we don't see in canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-19
Updated: 2020-07-22
Packaged: 2021-03-04 21:54:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 21,284
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25373473
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/airdeari/pseuds/airdeari
Summary: Claude knows something is up.Edelgard has met her match.Dimitri is doomed.9 attempts to trigger the single conversation that could change the course of the looming intercontinental war—or better yet, stop it before it breaks out. Each scenario is categorized by alignment on the good-evil/law-chaos scale.[Day 4 of FE Trans Week: Self Love & Comfortable & Everyone Lives AU]
Relationships: Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd & Edelgard von Hresvelg, Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd/Ashe Duran | Ashe Ubert, Ingrid Brandl Galatea/Edelgard von Hresvelg
Comments: 13
Kudos: 112
Collections: Fire Emblem Trans Week 2020!





	1. Lawful Evil

**Author's Note:**

> A couple quick warnings:
> 
> 1\. This fic entails a “stealth” character worrying about being outed against their will before they get the chance to come out on their own terms. There will be incorrect pronoun usage, but it’s not characters being transphobic—just unfortunate hijinks involving people who know too much but haven’t yet put two and two together.
> 
> 2\. People in this fic will unfortunately be occasionally oblivious and therefore suggestive about Dimigard. They get shut down, but I know even the mention of it can make folks uncomfy, so heads up.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Claude's attempt.

Claude knows something is up. He’s known it since the mock battle.

He knew something was up _before_ the mock battle, to be sure, and that’s why he teased Dimitri about it on the battlefield to try to catch him off-guard. His reaction—if it could even be called one at all, it barely even affected him after a quick _cringe_ of all things—still has Claude puzzling, two weeks later.

When people are strong, he likes to know their weaknesses, even if it’s something trivial. Hilda outright stated hers when they first met (“Hey, I’m Hilda! I’m supposed to be, like, the helper to the house leader or something? But don’t expect me to do any _work_.”) and Lorenz was an open book almost before he opened his mouth (and then failed to shut it again). Even the professor has obvious weak points, even if most of them are only encountered off of the battlefield. Claude thought he had Dimitri figured out from the moment they met, with all his noble propriety, and that weird, stiff aura of Fódlan-brand repression that stinks off of the kids from Faerghus worse than anyone else. By all his calculations, Dimitri should have been rattled the moment Claude drew a connection between his eyes and the future Emperor of Adrestia.

With a wrinkled nose of disgust, absolutely not faked, because Claude has since seen him try to lie and it is _not_ elegant, Dimitri brushed it off like nothing more than dust on his shoulders.

Something is going on between the Prince of Faerghus and the Princess of Adrestia, and Claude is going to find out what it is.

He is going to find out from Dimitri himself, and not talk to Edelgard at all preferably, because although he may have fucked up trying to outwit Dimitri in the mock battle, it is still very much obvious to anyone with eyes that Edelgard is absolutely not going to tell him anything about anything. But Dimitri? Even if he doesn’t actually _say_ anything, Claude might be able to read it in his face, as long as he asks the right questions.

Dimitri’s basic. He haunts the training halls almost as much as that weird rude little Blue Lion that’s obsessed with swords, or the punchy guy from the Black Eagles, or Leonie. So Claude drags himself out there in the morning of his free day with a satchel of snacks, a canteen of water, and a pair of leather arching gloves he hasn’t needed since he was a kid. They fit tighter than they used to over his grown and callused hands. Even with a lightweight training bow and a slackened draw, his fingers will be screaming with blisters if he keeps this up for as long as he’s planning to. He camps out there by the targets, firing arrow after arrow after arrow with lazy ease, waiting for his _real_ target to arrive.

The plan is to make a casual, meandering approach several minutes after Dimitri inevitably arrives at the training ground. The plan goes out the window when Dimitri takes five hours to arrive and Claude, in the interest of looking busy, has learned how to shoot a bullseye upside-down from a standing backbend, has split 4 arrows down the middle by shooting into the notch of the arrow fired previously (he would have made more casualties, but the drawstring is too loose to fire the arrow with enough force), and wore a hole through the inner index finger of his old gloves such that the blisters he’s trying to avoid are probably forming anyway. He is not wasting any more time here. He can’t risk someone stealing Dimitri’s attention away and having to wait another hour to get his chance to talk to the guy.

“Hey!” he calls loudly, waving his arm high above him to get Dimitri’s attention. He constantly forgets whether it’s Highness or Majesty with him—what’s the rule of succession when His Late Majesty is dead? Does _His Majesty_ wait until the formal coronation just like _King_ does?—but he hasn’t gotten any dirty looks (from Dimitri, at least) for always saying, “Your Princeliness!”

A startled look, maybe, but not a dirty one. Dedue is hovering over Dimitri’s shoulder with the same stern, impassive gaze as always that Claude hasn’t figured out how to read yet (gods, he _wants_ to figure it out, but alas, there’s only so many schemes he can work on simultaneously). That god-gifted thick slice of man waits at a respectful distance while Dimitri makes a slow, cautious approach.

“Spar with me?” Claude invites. “I won’t use a bow, promise.”

Dimitri raises his eyebrows in surprise, but he’s smiling all the same. “Oh?” he says. “Then what shall it be? I must warn you, I am almost as skilled with the sword as I am with the lance.”

“Oh, I know. I have a plan. Humor me, here,” Claude says, holding up a finger. “Let’s fight with something _neither_ of us is good at: axes. Level the playing field between us, y’know?”

Of course, Claude is lying. He’s not _good_ at axes, certainly, but he’s been playing with them since before he could read. It’s just that there are a couple of things that he values: one, having the upper hand; two, not getting tragically killed by Dimitri Accidentally-Snapped-A-Steel-Lance-In-Two-During-A-Mock-Battle Blaiddyd.

He’s got a real middle name, Claude vaguely remembers, but this new one Claude came up with for him suits him better.

Claude twirls the haft of his training axe around the back of his hand and catches it to get a feel for its weight. He prefers throwing axes, for the same reasons he prefers the bow: distance from combat, and his naturally good aim. His father would be proud of him for taking an axe in both hands and running direct into a fight for once.

His father would not be proud of him for failing to land a single hit on this lily-white blond boy from northern Fódlan after a solid two minutes of one-sided combat.

Claude knows he wasn’t the only one who was lying. Though Dimitri takes a passive approach to the spar, observing and deflecting every blow Claude deals, it’s with clean poise and efficient motions. Claude is panting and Dimitri hasn’t broken a sweat.

“Damn,” Claude huffs when Dimitri knocks back against the axe hard enough that it nearly flies from his hands. He’s glad he’s still wearing those ratty arching gloves; the friction against his palms burns even through the leather. “Where’d you learn to counter axes like that? Are you sparring with Edelgard behind my back?”

Dimitri’s smile falls in abrupt shock. “No—no, of course not,” he stammers.

His loose, flexible stance, perfect for redirecting kinetic energy away from his center, goes stiff. If this were the mock battle, it would be the opening Claude was angling for all along. If all he wanted were a cheap victory, he could dive in now and claim it.

He wants more. He wants the story.

“Aw, c’mon,” Claude whines, letting his arms hang by his side: a show of vulnerability, dropping his physical guard in an attempt to make Dimitri drop his emotional one. “Don’t worry, I won’t get mad! Unless you still don’t invite me after this. Then I’ll be a _little_ disappointed, not gonna lie.”

“It’s—it’s nothing like that,” Dimitri insists, dragging a foot back into a far more defensive stance. “I… with Dedue. I’ve, ah, learned some things when sparring with Dedue. He is also a skilled wielder of the axe, you see. That—that is all.”

His smile returns, but it’s wobbly, and wrong in his eyes. The only thing in his eyes, before he squeezes them shut to hide it, is terror.

That… is _not_ what Claude was expecting. And it’s not something he can explain, either. Not without more information.

He’s not sure how much further he can push before Dimitri breaks, but he tries his luck at one more nudge. “Well, hey, you better ask Edelgard to axe-battle with you sometime,” Claude suggests. “Maybe you won’t win, but I bet she’ll be pretty impressed. Might win you some points with her.”

Dimitri gives a scoffing laugh at the ground. “There is no impressing Edelgard,” he says darkly. “This meager defense would never hold against her might for long.”

Claude raises an eyebrow at the first thread of truth Dimitri has let loose. “So you’ve been trying to impress her already.”

Dimitri laughs again, shaking his head. “Of course not. That is a battle I lost long ago.”

It doesn’t occur to Claude that “long ago” is a funny phrase to use barely a month into the school year. So he falls off the trail right when he doesn’t realize he’s getting close.

“Then what _is_ it you want with the princess?” Claude asks, folding his arms. Dimitri may be guarded, but maybe a straightforward approach is the best way to meet a straightforward opposition. “You’re not subtle. There’s definitely something going on—something you want from her. If you won’t tell _me_ about it, will you at least man up and tell _her_?”

Dimitri can’t keep eye contact. “Man up,” he repeats with his saddest laugh yet, just a huff and a quick shake of his shoulders. “I… I believe you have mistaken something about this situation. I do seek to make an ally of her, for the future of our nations. I’m afraid there is nothing more to it.”

Claude narrows his eyes and waits. It doesn’t have a very pronounced effect when the target of the silent stare isn’t looking at him. He sighs, and settles into this straightforward honesty thing even deeper.

“Then invite her to spar with you with the _intent_ to get your ass beat,” he suggests. “Bringing us closer as allies is why I asked you to spar today, and, hey, even if I couldn’t get a single hit on you, I think it worked.”

Yeah, okay, maybe he’s incapable of honesty, but it’s the thought that counts. Besides, Dimitri isn’t telling the truth about just wanting to be _political allies_ with Edelgard, so it’s only fair.

“Or just ask her to… study with you at the library, or share tea, or something,” he continues. “Just quit hanging around feeling sorry for yourself and staring after her when you don’t think she’s looking. She’s gonna catch you one day.”

After a pause, where Claude can’t think of anything else to say, Dimitri hits him with that same ugly smile and closed eyes to hide its falseness. “Thank you for your counsel, Claude,” he says, which is already noble-speak for _I am not going to heed a single word of your advice_ before he drives the point home by adding, “I will keep it in mind.”

Without so much as a farewell, Dimitri strides away with his hands wringing over the axe handle, fleeing for the weapons locker. Claude is helpless to do anything but watch him go.

But this isn’t the end, he knows. No, this is only the first chapter in a saga that he will see through to the end.


	2. Chaotic Evil

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hilda's "attempt".

Claude knows something is up when he finds Hilda in the library.

He rubs his eyes and blinks a few time to be sure he’s not seeing things, but sure enough, she’s still there. Before his brain can explode from sheer cognitive dissonance, he catches the quick flashing of her fingers under the desk she’s at. He exhales a sigh of relief to realize the small stack of books in front of her are just to hold down a bracelet she’s weaving.

Still, the library? Hilda, in the library. The _library_.

“What,” he asks as he walks up to her, “are you doing here?”

“Scheming,” she replies without looking up from her bracelet. It’s another one with gold and black floss; she’s making them for all of the Golden Deer. Except Lorenz, because when she went out of her way to offer to make him one, he started trying to commission the details of how he’d prefer a brooch to a bracelet, and what colors would compliment the rose pin he wears now, and she decided that the accessory that would look best on him was a black eye.

Claude loves Hilda, and he loves her even more for what she just said, but he is definitely reasonably afraid of her for various reasonable reasons. (One of which is her last name.)

“What, my dear Hilda,” he asks, dragging a chair to sit opposite her, “are you scheming?”

“You know how you were trying to get those royal stick-in-the-muds from the other houses to talk to each other?” she says.

His interest is piqued tenfold. He leans both elbows onto the desk and looms forward. “Yes?”

“Well, I invited them to tea,” she says, tying a knot at the end of her row.

It’s a rather forward approach, not one Claude would call a _scheme_. “Both of them?” he asks. “Together, or separate? When?”

“Together. Right now,” she replies.

“Right _now_?” Claude repeats. He grabs his chair as he half-jumps out of it, scanning the library for flashes of red or blue. “They coming here? Should I make myself scarce? I mean, I’m gonna spy on them, obviously, who do you think I _am_ , but—”

“Oh, no, they’re down in the courtyard still, probably,” she says. “I invited them out there and showed up five minutes late, you know, to be fashionable. And I told them I forgot the tea in the kitchen! And so I ran back to go get it, and now I’m hiding in the last place they’d ever think to look.”

She puts a tiny crochet hook Claude didn’t even see her holding into her teeth and pulls on the threads of her bracelet to tighten the loops and knots, while Claude is still working out what just happened.

“So they’re still down there. Alone,” he says.

“Mmhmm,” she hums around the crochet hook.

“You set them up together and you didn’t even stick around to watch the fallout?” he asks in disbelief.

She pulls the hook back into her hand to continue her work, and to speak. “I mean, I don’t really _care_ about whatever issues they’ve got to work out like you do,” she drawls. “I just thought it would be funny.”

Claude takes a deep breath before he speaks.

“Hilda.”

“Yeah, Claude?”

“You’re, like, one-hundred-percent a lesbian, right?”

She raises an eyebrow at him. “Uh, yeah?”

It’s a mild disappointment, honestly, but he exaggerates it a little with a wince and a clicking noise between his molars and his cheek. “Dammit,” he mutters. “Because I think I kinda fell in love with you a little, there.”

“Oh, _ew_ , Claude, gross!”

He runs cackling out of the library before she can throw a needle at him. He’s got places to be, anyway. Hilda may have more of a laissez-faire attitude to the whole mystery of Edelgard and Dimitri, but Claude has got to see the drama unfold firsthand, if he can.

By the time he gets to the courtyard, Dimitri is the only one he sees. He’s standing over an empty table, leaning one palm on the edge to hold down a small scrap of paper, on which he’s scribbling a quick note. Claude doesn’t have time to find a hiding spot before Dimitri twitches his head up like he’s got some kind of sixth sense for sneaky bastards. His puppy-dog-dejected face breaks into a relieved smile and makes a beeline for Claude, who, well, he can’t leave _now_.

“Claude,” says Dimitri, excited to breathlessness. “Thank goodness you’re here. If you see Hilda, please let her know I am terribly sorry I could not stay to take tea with her, but I have a meeting in the training hall that I must attend. I was just leaving her a note to explain my absence when she returns.”

“Oh, uh,” says Claude, not ready to lie but absolutely not going to blow it, “you got double-booked today, huh?”

Dimitri shifts his weight. “Not intentionally,” he begins slowly. “I had set aside a full hour, but I think something must have come up while she was getting the tea. Please do look out for her if you can—I am a bit worried that something has happened.”

“Oh, _wow_ , yeah,” Claude says, trying not to exaggerate his reaction, but he needs to do _something_ to keep himself from bursting out laughing, and from the looks of it, Dimitri isn’t likely to catch onto any duplicity, anyway. “I’ll be sure to keep an eye out. You were out here waiting for her, all alone, for an hour?”

“Er,” Dimitri stammers, and as he speaks he shifts his weight again, and then back, and Claude has to pretend his lips are very itchy and need scratching to hide his grin, “not entirely alone, at least for some time. Hilda had asked to meet with both myself and Edelgard, actually. I was under the impression that there were some house-related matters to speak of, and she was attending in your stead.”

Claude pulls up his eyebrows and presses his lips firmly together to keep a laugh from bursting out. “Nothing I knew about. Sorry, Your Princeliness,” he replies. “Hope you and Edelgard found a way to pass the time, at least?”

“Ah,” and the motherfucker shifts his weight _again_ , “not exactly. She… was not able to stay long, though I believe it was through no fault of her own! Her retainer, Hubert, came to retrieve her very shortly after we sat down—evidently, something had come up.”

“Mmm, yeah, I’m sure it had,” Claude says sympathetically, nodding his head. “Well, you better get to that meeting you were talking about, huh? Don’t worry about Hilda, I’ll find her and let her know what’s up.”

Dimitri glitters with a smile that would be so beautiful if it weren’t entirely empty of _any_ critical thinking, and gives Claude a quick bow of thanks before he departs. He rushes off at a light jog, which is good, because Claude is shaking so hard he stumbles into a crouch behind the rosebushes, bubbling with laughter that fills up his mouth to its breaking point. He hopes Dimitri is out of earshot by the time it bursts out, loud as a scream, and forceful enough to bring him to tears within seconds.


	3. Lawful Neutral

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ferdinand's attempt.

Edelgard has met her match.

She’s blonde, because of course she’s blonde, and agile, with the lean build of an aspiring pegasus knight all the way up until the impressive breadth of her shoulders. Her hair is long and thick in the loose braid that bounces against her back as she goes through her paces with her lance, a familiar familiarity. Edelgard’s seen her around campus, never with makeup, and that’s familiar, too. The one thing is that her eyes are green, but that’s probably a good thing. It’s something to make her different.

Unfortunately, right now, Edelgard has chosen the company and location most likely to cause Ferdinand von Aegir to appear and attempt to make himself the inescapable center of attention.

“Just now, I had the honor of sparring with His Highness, Prince Dimitri,” Ferdinand says, using the guise of honorifics to pretend he was humbled by the experience. “He is a strong and capable fighter, as to be expected of a house leader and future ruler. We were evenly matched in combat.”

“Ferdie, sweetheart,” Dorothea says patiently, and she means anything but, “Edie and I are practicing magic right now and we need a _lot_ of concentration. You can brag about this some other time.”

“I do not mean to brag!” Ferdinand puffs out his cheeks a little as he folds his arms. “I came here merely to extend Prince Dimitri’s invitation to a sparring match with Edelgard, if Her Imperial Highness does not object.”

Ignoring the petulant way Ferdinand sneers her title (if he would only _listen_ to something other than the sound of his own voice, he would know that she thinks she deserves it as little as he thinks she does), Edelgard glances over at Dimitri. He stands in the center of the pitch with a training sword in one hand and a lance in the other, engaged in lively conversation with other members of his house. One of them, a mousy boy with ashen hair, holds a spear of his own, and Dimitri is pointing as if giving advice about his grip and stance.

“He looks a bit busy at the moment,” Edelgard says. “And regardless, so am I.”

“Why don’t you run along and give him her answer?” Dorothea teases. “Since you’re having such fun playing his little errand boy.”

It’s a deceptive thing, when Ferdinand finds himself at a loss for words. For a moment, his jaw will drop, and nothing will come out. It seems like a good thing, until his face goes red, and even though he has nothing to say, he’ll start speaking again.

“This is not the invitation of an _errand boy_ ,” he scoffs. “I am doing the polite and _noble_ action of facilitating communication between the future leaders of our countries! I do this in your best interest, Edelgard. Do you know, I have heard that you come off as quite cold to the students of other houses? For the sake of diplomacy, I urge you to build rapport with—”

“Ferdie, did he even _ask_ to spar with Edie?” Dorothea interrupts. “Or are you just meddling?”

And Dorothea’s got him again. It may be an occupational hazard to be around Dorothea (and lately Hubert, the poor thing) if she wants to avoid Ferdinand’s attention, but Dorothea is practiced enough at shutting down his monologues that the two of them handle him better than one could alone.

“Or,” Edelgard continues before he can start spewing more nonsense about nobility, “did you just want us each to spar against a third party, so you could judge your own strength against mine by an outside benchmark?”

That gets him _good_. His face goes white instead of red, and his attempt at a stern frown looks more like a pout. “I will just tell him you have declined,” he mutters bitterly as he stomps around to leave.

Over his shoulder, Edelgard sees that the circumstances have changed. Among the Blue Lions flocking around Dimitri is the blonde-haired, green-eyed girl with the lance. She’s pointing at Dimitri’s hands and causing that wide, gracious-but-humble smile to cross his face as he repositions his grip.

“Ferdinand, wait,” Edelgard calls, and she almost regrets it from the hope that blooms across his face when he eagerly turns around. “Give me a moment to finish up with Dorothea. I’ll speak with him.”

Dorothea has a curious expression waiting for her. Edelgard’s is pained and apologetic.

“Do you know that blonde girl from the Blue Lions?” she whispers.

All at once, Dorothea reverses the look on her face, starting with a flash of her eyes and a curling smile on her lips. “Oh, Ingrid?” she says. “She’s a cutie, isn’t she?”

Edelgard’s face falls. “You don’t,” she starts, and doesn’t know how to finish. “I mean to say… Is it alright if I… I don’t want to step over you, by any means, I just—”

“Oh my gosh, Edie, _go_ for it,” Dorothea gushes, eyes bright. “Listen, she’s a little… _stuck_ about girls, you know? But more power to you if you get her out of her head and into her heart.”

Edelgard breaks into a relieved, grateful smile. She wishes she could hug Dorothea. In fact, the only thing stopping her is the fact that Ferdinand might be watching. She whispers her thanks, composes herself, and confidently makes her way towards Dimitri Blaiddyd, and definitely not anyone else.

She curves her way around to Dimitri by coming straight for Ingrid’s turned back. She can’t let Ingrid see her coming, lest she skitter out of the way like the rest of the Lions before she’s had the chance to say hello. It’s just as Ferdinand says—she’s _cold_. She can’t help but feel like there’s a repulsive aura around her, like the other students think she’ll snap their necks if they come too close. She doesn’t know how even an inch of intimidation made it into all five-foot-nothing of her. _Intimidation_ , that’s what her other Eagles called it, after finally warming up to her—those who _did_ , anyway, because Bernadetta still can’t look her in the eye.

The grey-haired boy sees her coming and all but stumbles out of the way. Dimitri’s eye catches the movement even when Ingrid doesn’t, and he looks up. Ingrid must see the way his face changes when he looks up—how the color falls from it, how still and hollow he becomes, looking like a ceramic sculpture rather than a man—and she turns around, and steps aside to make way for the Empire’s heiress, face flushed with the warmth of exercise and the heat of embarrassment.

Goddess damn it all.

“Don’t mind me,” Edelgard says, glancing at that other boy and Ingrid with her best attempt at a soft smile. She’s still learning those, mostly by learning that she had forgotten them sometime over the last turbulent decade of her life.

“Edelgard,” Dimitri says dumbly. “Did you, ah, was there something you needed?”

“Maybe later,” she says with a nonchalant wave. “For now, I’d just like to listen in on some pointers for lance technique, if that’s alright.”

Dimitri’s eyebrows shoot up, and his eyes flick to the side. “I—of course, I—but if—I would think,” he fumbles, “you would be better off learning from Ingrid rather than from myself, she is far more skilled with—ah, have you two been introduced?”

Bingo. It’s only been a couple of moons, and she’s barely spoken to him, yet somehow Dimitri is so easy to predict.

Edelgard turns in the direction he indicates with all the unassumption she can muster. “I don’t believe so,” she says, and gives a small bow that goes just a bit deeper than would be expected for someone of her station to give to anyone other than fellow royalty. “I am Edelgard von Hresvelg. A pleasure to meet you.”

When she lifts her head, Ingrid is still flushed, and eyes wide at the show of deference. She stutters into a deeper bow. “I-Ingrid Galatea, Your Highn—er, Your Imperial Highness, is it?”

Edelgard’s smile lightens without any conscious effort. It’s a levity she hasn’t felt in years. “Just Edelgard is fine,” she says.

Ingrid’s smile there was glittering and gracious, but for the rest of practice, she stays stiff and flustered for as long as Edelgard is there, and she won’t take the lead in teaching lance stances no matter how much Dimitri coaxes her. Edelgard has to follow her back to the locker room in order to try to strike up conversation before her window of opportunity closes.

She’s a tough nut to crack, but she’s delighted to speak of her country. She has a surprisingly broad, though perhaps shallow, knowledge of world history, strung together through tales of knights’ valor—the foils to the Empire’s versions of the events, which thrum with the unified heartbeats of the common people. Edelgard tells herself it’s not a test when she recounts her side of the story, that none of this is consequential enough to bring ideals into it. Ingrid is just a pretty face she doesn’t have much time to kiss.

When Ingrid’s eyes go wide with awe as she clings to every word, when she almost faints from the heat in the sauna because she can’t bear to stop listening, when she looks down with a red, glistening face and a weak smile as she leans on Edelgard for support when they shuffle out into fresh, cool air and she mumbles, “You’re pretty strong,” Edelgard falls farther than she intended.

“Maybe we can continue this conversation over tea sometime, instead,” she invites.

Ingrid takes a moment to comprehend the words, but then she nods eagerly.

Edelgard never ends up asking Dimitri for that sparring match. Ferdinand tries not to let her forget it. Near-daily, for over a week. She forgets anyway. There’s too much else to think about. Nothing else to think about.


	4. Chaotic Good

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sylvain's attempt. Oh dear.

Edelgard has met her match in the training hall today, and she hasn’t even swung her axe a single time.

She’s seen him around before, but now she’s matching up his appearance and demeanor to the rumors she’s heard of a philanderer from the Blue Lions called Sylvain. He takes her clipped replies as an excuse to squeeze in more words of his own, like she’s implying intent to yield her time to him.

Hubert is looming in the distance, as usual. Earlier, he caught her eye and gave a hand signal, because the last time he interrupted and escorted her from a conversation in which he assumed she was an unwilling participant, she had to sit down with him and come up with a pair of hand signals for them to exchange to _confirm_ she wanted to be rescued. She didn’t respond to his gesture because she was sure Hubert would try to kill Sylvain if she indicated any distress, and she didn’t want that.

She thinks she does now, though.

“So how are you adjusting to academy life, Princess?” Sylvain says, stretching his arms up and folding them behind his head, and it might be the first time he’s asked her something about herself for the past seven minutes. He ruins it by continuing to talk instead of letting her answer: “A little different from life in a palace, I bet. I mean, I’m just a run-of-the-mill noble compared to Your Highness, but for me, it’s pretty weird not having servants following you around everywhere you go, nagging you about everything. It’s pretty nice, for sure, just weird. Ah…”

He pivots his upper body to look behind him, locking onto Hubert instantly. More credit than Edelgard would have given him, keeping such close tabs on her skulking, admittedly less-than-scrupulous retainer throughout the conversation.

“But you’ve still got _one_ servant following you around, huh? My condolences,” he says with a wink back at Edelgard, from which she immediately averts her eyes to pretend she didn’t see. “Hey, want to spend some time away from him for a little while? I can look out for you, don’t worry. Could show you somewhere nice downtown, a little restaurant run by some—”

“Thank you, Sylvain,” Edelgard cuts in perhaps a bit too sharply, but her patience has worn too thin to dull the edge. “Perhaps some other time, however. Unfortunately, I need to catch up on my training right now.”

Sylvain clicks his tongue with disappointment, and here’s the thing about him. He’s huge. She didn’t notice how tall he was standing among the likes of Dimitri and, heavens, Dedue, and the width of his shoulders makes him _look_ proportional, from a distance, for a man several inches shorter than he actually is up close. She always thought Felix and Ingrid, the other two she’s seen him hanging around, were just short. By no means is Felix _tall_ , but she caught Dorothea standing next to him the other day, and they came to the same height, even with her heels and the puff of her little hat. And Edelgard ended up on her toes when she tried to kiss Ingrid.

Ingrid, of course, is the real reason why Edelgard is back in the training hall. These are her usual haunting grounds. And now Edelgard can’t even _see_ around Sylvain’s big… bigness enough to see whether she’s here, let alone try to squeeze past him to get out of the weapons locker.

“Your Highnesses both, you’re no fun,” he complains as he lets a laugh freshen up a smile that cannot be real because it hasn’t faded for this entire conversation. “But take it from me, with His Highness? It’s not because of Dedue tailing him everywhere. He’s just _like_ that. Man, the stories I could tell you about him—ooh, or should I keep my mouth shut? Don’t wanna go down in history as the guy who slipped blackmail material on the future King of Faerghus to the Empire.”

“Somehow, I highly doubt you have anything to say that could be used as political leverage,” Edelgard says. “Feel free to prove me wrong, however.”

Sylvain gives her the most interesting expression she’s seen so far in this conversation. None of his ingenuine smiles have been reflected in the emptiness of his eyes, but at this moment, those eyes go from blank to dark, and he’s still smiling. He’s smiling _more_.

“Oh, Princess,” he says, “you can’t tempt me _that_ easily.”

Just when Edelgard thinks she’s getting something out of Sylvain—maybe not the information he’s hiding, but definitely something _real_ —he blinks, and it’s gone. He’s empty-eyed and air-headed and smiling with the same vacancy.

“ _But_ , since you’re so cute, I’ll let you in on a secret,” he says, raising his hand to shield his lips as he leans over her, dropping his voice to a conspiratorial volume. “I heard through the grapevine that His Highness has a crush on you.”

Edelgard presses her eyes firmly closed. She exhales through the effort of keeping her nose from wrinkling. She’d be inclined not to believe Sylvain, but a number of odd circumstances in recent days—Hilda’s mysteriously abandoned teatime, Ferdinand’s secondhand sparring invitation, and Dimitri’s oddly nervous stammering whenever they ended up in the same place together—suddenly resolve into a pattern when Sylvain puts it together like that. She was being set up.

For the rest of the conversation, until her disgust fades, she clenches the haft of the training axe that Sylvain is _still_ not letting her go out and swing. Dimitri is… sweet. It’s not his fault that she’s having this visceral reaction at the thought of him having any _romantic_ inclinations towards her. With how much Sylvain seems to like gossip, she’s sure that her reaction is going to crawl along the same grapevine where he first got the rumor. Dimitri doesn’t deserve that.

“A word of advice? If he makes a move, turn him down,” Sylvain continues. When she opens her eyes, he’s studying her face, and immediately throws a chuckle through his lips to keep that smile of his lively. “He’s _horrible_ with girls, let me tell you.”

“Is he,” Edelgard murmurs. “Coming from you, that must mean quite a lot.”

She gets him for a moment. There’s a split second where the words pierce right through him. The smile drops in shock. But then he doubles over with raucous laughter, robbing her of all the satisfaction of insulting him by taking it in stride.

(When he bends over, Edelgard looks for Ingrid. She’s not there. Or, she’s not there anymore. Felix is idly slashing at a dummy like he just lost a sparring partner and doesn’t know what to do with himself.)

“So you’re _not_ just a stick in the mud behind all that stiff acting!” Sylvain chortles, clutching his heaving chest with both hands as he straightens back up. “You’re funny, Princess. But, hey, at least I have a sense of romance. Last time Dimitri liked a girl, he thought the way to show his love was giving her a _dagger_. Like, really? Not flowers, or even just a love letter would’ve—”

Edelgard has had enough of hearing about what Sylvain thinks is romantic.

“I spent some time in Faerghus when I was younger,” she says loudly enough to cut him off. “A girl I met there gave me a dagger when I had to leave. I understand it’s a traditional gift in your country. It was a gesture I appreciated very much.”

When she puts her hand on her hip, right beside that very dagger, she knows she’s got him. His stupid smirk fell away as soon as she mentioned the girl. While she’s not sure she’s exclusively attracted to women, and she’s certainly not sure she wants to paint that childhood friendship as romance in retrospect, it’s a sticking point that will at least get Sylvain off of her back, if he’s not too dense to hear it. But she wants to take it one more step, since she’s already come this far, just to drive the point in as hard as she can.

“So perhaps Dimitri has better ideas about how to woo a girl than _you_ do, Sylvain.” She hefts the axe up to rest on her shoulder with one hand. “Excuse me.”

He stutters a step out of her way but doesn’t commit. He’s still mostly blocking her exit as he scratches his head and mumbles, “Um, yeah, maybe.”

She might be cold, but she’s not about to shove Sylvain out of the way to get past. She takes another half-step forward and repeats herself, “Excuse me.”

“Maybe—” His stance widens instead of contracting. “Maybe you should talk to His Highness, after all.”

Edelgard frowns. She thought he understood her implication, but she’ll repeat it if she has to. “It was a gift from a _girl_ ,” she enunciates. “Do I make my meaning clear?”

“No! I mean, yes! Crystal clear, Highness. I just, uh.” He scoots one foot slowly back towards the other to make room for her to pass. “I _really_ think you should talk to Dimitri.”

She doesn’t dignify that with a response. She strides out onto the pitch, scans the whole arena, and still doesn’t see Ingrid.

After all that, she’s pissed off enough that she challenges Felix to spar with her. He must be pissed, too, because they fight past the point of winning or losing or counting blows. They just fight.


	5. Chaotic Neutral

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ingrid's attempt.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is a little hot and heavy, but I believe Ingrid's still underage at the academy, so rest assured that there is no sexual content.
> 
> The above note mostly serves to explain why Ingrid's attempt is being classified as chaotic neutral.

Edelgard strikes her match in a room they never noticed growing dark.

Her eyes have been mostly closed through the latter end of tonight’s sunset. Her hands were doing most of the seeing, up until the moment that one slid so far up the firm warmth of a thigh that it ended up under a skirt. She apologized, fumbling in the sudden dark for footing away from the girl in whose limbs she nearly lost herself.

She told herself before coming here that she needed to take it slow, to respect her partner’s boundaries, even if those boundaries were born from rotten, patriarchal tradition that she wants to set aflame with the sparks flying between them.

She strikes the match rather hard.

The flame is a blinding spot in the center of her vision. In a blink, she can no longer see beyond the small orb of light it casts. She reaches a splayed hand into the dark to guide her way—

It meets softness. Her fingers tangle with another’s, a little cool with sweat. But it’s Ingrid.

Ingrid who slipped a letter under Edelgard’s door asking her over for tea in her room. Ingrid who opened the door as soon as Edelgard knocked and there was no tea, there was just Ingrid, Ingrid who flung her arms around Edelgard’s neck, and it was less of a kiss than a smashing of lips together, and it was perfect. When they broke apart, they both said, “I’m sorry,” and they laughed, and they tried to talk about it, but they kept kissing each other instead, like gentle waves kissing the riverbed, water under the bridge.

Edelgard thought she went too far again. But Ingrid holds a candlestick up to her match to share the flame, casting a glow between their smiles.

Yes—Edelgard is smiling. She can’t help the giddy shape of her lips, nor the squeeze of her hand around Ingrid’s.

“I’m sorry it took so long for… for me to figure it all out,” Ingrid says in a hushed voice as she carries her candlestick around the room, lighting wicks in all of its corners to keep the room just barely aglow. These five or six feet between them is the furthest distance they’ve had in an hour, and hers is the longest sentence either of them has been able to finish in the same time.

“It’s alright,” says Edelgard, again. This time she can finish the thought that comes after it: “I’m sorry for pushing you before you were ready.”

“It’s okay,” Ingrid says again as she sets the candle in her hand back in its holder and returns to where Edelgard sits stiffly on the edge of the bed (as if the sheets aren’t rumpled and strewn about to hell from the two of them rolling over it already). “I… probably needed the push, honestly.”

She says it with a tone that implies another apology. Edelgard’s brows draw together, and she doesn’t know what to say that she hasn’t said already to assure Ingrid that, really and truly, she can take as much time as she needs. She’s worth any wait.

She was so soft and hot against Edelgard’s mouth.

“Things are just… _different_ in Faerghus,” Ingrid says nervously. “I just—I don’t know how to explain it, but—”

“I know,” says Edelgard.

Ingrid blinks at her in surprise. Edelgard smiles faintly. She scoots herself closer to the foot of the bed, inviting Ingrid to sit beside her.

“I… spent some time in Faerghus when I was younger. My mother’s family—my uncle—they lived in the west of the Empire, close to the Kingdom, so he had me moved there when, well, some political things were going on,” she explained as Ingrid tentatively took a seat on her own bed. “I was fairly young, but I still felt the difference between Adrestia and Faerghus. I made friends with a girl there, and she was so…” Edelgard laughs. “I just wanted to teach her an Adrestian waltz! I didn’t see the problem if the two of us were dance partners. She was _scandalized_.”

Ingrid giggles. Something about it, the earnestness, the rarity of the occasion, something makes it sound so filled with joy that it flutters in Edelgard’s chest every sacred time.

“You…” Edelgard takes a deep breath, and lets it out in a shudder near enough to a laugh that she can pretend it’s one. “This is so silly, but… I first started looking at you because you reminded me of her.”

She pries her eyes from her hands clenched together in her lap, just to steal a glance at Ingrid, to see if she has to laugh this off and change topics—see how she can swing this back to thoughtless physicality, smudging all over the things she’s said with kisses upon kisses.

Ingrid has her head cocked and eyes wide, but she’s silent, patient, eager for more. Edelgard loves that look on her.

“She looked a bit like you, I suppose,” she says a little too quickly, tucking hair behind her ear. “Blonde hair…”

What else. Her mouth runs dry as she tries to come up with _anything else_. She definitely made this connection before, but _why?_

“Good with a spear,” she adds, trying to tuck her hair behind her ear again. It’s already there.

Ingrid starts giggling again. It still makes Edelgard’s heart flutter, but with an entirely different terror.

“I—I _assure_ you, there was more,” Edelgard stammers, feeling her face glow with heat.

“I—no, Edelgard, I—”

She’s still shaking with laughter, but she called her _Edelgard_. It’s the first time she’s said her name instead of _Your Highness_. All the air rushes out of Edelgard’s lungs. She feels, for the first time, like a girl instead of a princess. They’re just two girls, and when they kissed, it was symmetry.

“It’s just—you’re describing half the girls in Faerghus,” Ingrid laughs. “We’re all blonde there—me, Mercedes, His Highness, Ashe is more of a silvery-blond, sure, but—and we all want to be knights, so we’re all using lances, so—”

She splays out her hands at all that they’ve put out on the table, and it does sound silly when it’s laid out so barren like that. Edelgard does not know how to protest, only that she has to.

“I can’t very well remember the similarities now,” she says. “Even if I did remember more about her, as I’ve gotten to know you… You’re just _you_.” Her gaze finally makes it back to Ingrid’s beautiful green eyes, the sweetness of her smile, her kissed-pink lips. “Everything is you.”

She tries so, so hard to be careful, to move with restraint, to keep the tip of her tongue from doing anything more than teasing over Ingrid’s lower lip as they fall into each other again. Ingrid's breathy little whine buzzes against her mouth when she does it. Her heart is pounding with want. She clenches her fists in Ingrid’s shirt to keep them anchored, to keep them from wandering where she’s not been invited, not with words, even if Ingrid’s fingers knot in her hair and her mouth opens to welcome her inside.

Their tongues meet before Edelgard realizes what’s happening, and it hits them both like lightning. Edelgard is alive and electric. Ingrid jumps back from the shock.

“Sorry,” they both say again. Ingrid ducks her head with a nervous laugh to avoid looking Edelgard in the eye. It saves Edelgard from having to do the same thing.

“I can give you some time alone,” Edelgard says gently, edging her way off the bed. “I know this is… a lot for you. I understand.”

“N-no, I,” Ingrid protests, reaching for Edelgard’s wrist. “I just. Um. Maybe…”

There are only three lit candles in Ingrid’s room, but in her wide, shining eyes, they look like all the stars in the sky.

“Teach me an Adrestian waltz?” she asks with a quivering smile that makes Edelgard’s knees go just as weak.

Edelgard holds her hand out, palm up, and bows to the partner she is inviting to dance, like a proper nobleman. As she tilts her head up to see if Ingrid will reciprocate, she has to stifle a laugh at the thought of Ingrid accepting with the lady’s traditional curtsy.

“Do you want me to teach you the gentleman’s steps?” she asks. “Neither partner is really the _lead_ in this waltz, so the steps are just as easy either way.”

Ingrid’s fingertips hover on Edelgard’s palm. She watches their hands to avoid eye contact. “Um, which—whichever,” she defers.

Smiling, Edelgard brings Ingrid’s hand to her waist, then rests her hand gently on Ingrid’s shoulder. “That’s another thing that makes you like her,” she says as she moves them both into the proper stance. “I hope you don’t take this the wrong way, I promise I mean it as a compliment, but you both have a sort of masculine presence to you. Not just that you’re tomboyish or anything, but… The way you embody nobility, it’s… gentlemanly. I admire the way you carry yourself.”

She can feel Ingrid’s whole body change under her hands. After withering in apprehension from Edelgard’s careful preface, her spine lengthens, her chin rises, and she draws in enough breath to fill out her chest to its broadest, all while watching Edelgard with all the awe in the world.

Ingrid could barely fathom two girls being in love without a push. Edelgard sees the spark of discovery and knows she must fan the flames gently, so as not to blow them out with too much force.

“To think that, when I first met you, the only difference I could find between you was that your eyes are green, and hers were blue,” she laughs softly. “I think I was just in love with your eyes from the start.”

She’s taken Ingrid’s hand in hers to begin the waltz, and she swears she can _feel_ it run cold and dampen with sweat.

Edelgard takes a half-step away from the dancers’ embrace, untangling her fingers from Ingrid’s and lifting her other hand from her shoulder. Ingrid’s green eyes no longer hold the stars; they’re blank and dark with a dawning horror.

“Ingrid, is something the matter?” Edelgard says gently.

“You,” Ingrid blurts as a start, but she doesn’t seem to have words to follow it yet. Her hands snap up towards her face and she stares at them like they’ve only just grown off the ends of her arms after eighteen years. Still flicking her eyes between her palms, she says, “You shouldn’t—I shouldn’t—I shouldn’t do this. I shouldn’t be with y—Your Highness.”

And just like that, Edelgard isn’t just a girl anymore.

She can feel the boot on her heart, threatening to stomp down and smash it, but she fights, because she’s brought Ingrid this far, and she won’t lose her to classism, either. “If this is about status, I don’t care about any of that,” she insists. “If I’m to become Emperor, I want to use my reign to create a world where this caste system of nobility and commoners is eliminated. I—”

She’s told Ingrid this already. Ingrid’s shaking her head to deflect the repeated words from getting through to her. “You should—Your Highness should,” she says, voice hollow and shaking. “His Highness, Prince Dimitri. Your Highness should speak with His Highness.”

Edelgard has never heard Ingrid speak so formally. Her cadence is less like a properly groomed noblewoman’s—certainly not a noble _man_ ’s—and more like a noble servant’s. The strange layer of propriety wrapped around her speech makes the words spin in Edelgard’s head before they take on their twisted meaning. All at once, she remembers the rumor she did so well to forget, the one Sylvain told her weeks ago.

“ _Dimitri?_ ” Edelgard repeats with incredulity. “Why would I—what could _possibly_ make you think I would have any interest in him?”

“I—I think that—before I have any… any relations with Your Highness, you—Your Highness should speak with the Prince,” she states again, and she’s backing towards the door, like Edelgard’s presence is forcing her out of her own bedroom. She won’t lift her eyes, won’t even turn her head to face Edelgard head-on.

Edelgard wonders whether the knife wedged between her and Ingrid is one borne of her duty to her future King and his desires.

“Ingrid, I don’t care how Dimitri feels. And I urge you to reconsider placing his feelings in any position of power over your personal life.” It’s a last ditch effort as Ingrid fumbles for the doorknob behind her, to clear the air of any possible ill word she might have spoken. “I didn’t mean to imply anything by telling you about that other girl. I’m not conflating the two of you, and I didn’t—I’ve never had any romantic feelings about her, if you’re worried about that. I just meant to share a silly story—”

“It’s not—nothing like that! Not a problem. Don’t worry,” Ingrid stammers. Though she sounds more like her normal self, the door squeaks open behind her. “I just, I have to… get to the training grounds, for stable duty.”

She winces at the word salad of excuses her brain spits out. In that moment, with Ingrid leaning stiffly into the door behind her and inching it open, and Edelgard standing helplessly in the middle of a bedroom that isn’t even hers, their eyes finally meet, and it’s with complete resignation. The knowledge that something here has been ruined and cannot be fixed, not now, maybe not ever.

“Sorry,” Ingrid squeaks out, ending the night the same way it started.

And then she’s gone, in a thunder of footsteps pounding down the hall, without even shutting the door behind her.

Edelgard feels like she’s limping to the door when she finally remembers how to move her heavy feet at all. An Adrestian waltz was humming in her head as they prepared to dance. Now it loops on a refrain so short it drives her mad to hear over and over and over again, the only thing she has to fill the silence inside Ingrid’s empty bedroom.

The hallway is dark and vacant by the time she makes it to the open doorway to look outside. Her eyelids fall shut as the slow, heavy sigh falls out of her chest. When she opens her eyes again, the hallway has changed. There’s a figure near the end of it, close to where her bedroom door lies.

Hubert, of course. Always within reach. Always waiting and ready, for her.

After shutting Ingrid’s door, she strides in the manner of an Emperor, with the certain dignity expected of her, despite there being no one to watch her. As she approaches, Hubert slides to the wall to make room for her to pass, and for him to take his place at her side. He’s silent, which is about the best he can be in situations like this. He never approved of her _fraternizing_ with the other students, especially those from other houses. She doesn’t want to hear his I-told-you-so’s, so it’s better he says nothing at all.

When she strides directly into her own room, he knows the limits of his ability, and he does not follow. Even when she leaves the door open.

She wishes he knew better.

Despite everything, she thinks of that forgotten girl from Faerghus again. When all else failed, when words could never convey the old Edelgard’s loneliness, her homesickness, her heartache for the family left behind, that girl would be as silent as Hubert, but she would follow her, hold her, stand by her in sympathy if not in empathy. She melted through all of Edelgard’s coldness with only the warmth of her presence, and Edelgard still didn’t know how.

Maybe because, she was loath to admit, she could see beloved pieces of her missing mother somehow reflected in this girl who had grown up in the capital of a different country. Letting her in was instinctive. Leaving her behind was like losing her mother twice.

Losing Ingrid is starting the whole chain of mourning all over again.

She should have known not to repeat this mistake.

She closes her bedroom door.


	6. Neutral Good

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mercedes's attempt.

Edelgard hasn’t met her match so much as she’s at her wit’s end.

A day after the debacle with Ingrid (the _latest_ debacle, anyway, because everything with her seems to be a tragedy of errors) Edelgard received an invitation to tea from Mercedes von Martritz. Although she’s in the Blue Lion house, Martritz is a family name Edelgard remembers not from the Kingdom, but from the Empire, one of the houses that fell in recent political turmoil, just like Hrym and Nuvelle (and nearly Hresvelg, if the von Aegirs had had their way). That she’s from the Blue Lions, and says she may invite another guest or two if permitted, gives Edelgard hope that this might be about Ingrid. With a mediator between them, someone as gentle as this soft-voiced Mercedes, older than even Hubert and with much more emotional wisdom, perhaps they can bridge this gap.

Chamomile isn’t one of her personal favorites, but she appreciates its calming effect when the steam rises from her cup to her nose.

She doesn’t appreciate that across from her, the tertiary guest in this tea party, sits not Ingrid, but Dimitri Blaiddyd.

His hands, ever in gauntlets, look comically large and brutish as he picks up his teacup. He fumbles a shy compliment to Mercedes on the brew from the scent alone, then sets it down without tasting it to continue staring at his hands in his lap. Mercedes has a lovely, warm smile that pairs nicely with her heartfelt pleasantries.

They’re so drawn into themselves and their cups of tea that Edelgard wonders if she actually is the only one who can see the elephant in the room.

“So,” Edelgard says, trying to keep brusqueness from her voice despite her short supply of patience, “what inspired you to invite the two of us to tea today?”

Mercedes smiles at her, settling her cup in its saucer. “I spoke to Ingrid this morning,” she finally admits, and Edelgard’s teeth grind audibly as she sets her jaw.

“Did you,” Edelgard says.

Dimitri’s shoulders shift and rise like he’s tangling his hands and fingers into knots beneath the table. He doesn’t lift his eyes.

“I understand the two of you had a bit of a… an _incident_ last night,” Mercedes says delicately, lifting her cup close to her lips. “I thought it might be good to talk things over and come to an understanding.”

“That does sound like a good idea,” says Edelgard, her voice laced with cold venom. “However, I would have much preferred to see Ingrid represent herself instead of sending a third party.”

Dimitri’s shoulders hike up higher. He shifts his weight in his chair from one side to the other, then back.

Mercedes finishes her sip of tea and places her cup on the table. She, too, turns to the third party. “Dimitri,” she says—she’s the only one of the Blue Lions who calls him by name, rather than _His Highness_ (or any of Felix’s choice epithets), “do you have anything you’d like to say to Edelgard?”

Dimitri steals an upward glance. It plummets as soon as he finds Edelgard’s probing stare upon him. The breath he draws in fills the top of his chest rather than the base of his lungs; she can see it in the way his shoulders rise.

“Edelgard,” he begins in a pitiful version of his voice, “I… must apologize for the poor timing of this. I had intended—or, well, I _should_ have told you this sooner, but…” He shakes his head. “I fear my excuse is a poor one. It concerns a highly personal matter, and I admit I was embarrassed to reveal it to you.”

“Better late than never,” Mercedes says with an encouraging smile.

Edelgard, who has had at least a week’s warning for what he wants to come next, would beg to differ. She flashes her hand signal under the table with the fervent, highest hope that Hubert is watching. She would prefer never.

“If you believe that this is poor timing,” she interrupts, “then perhaps it should wait. As you apparently both know, I am highly preoccupied with some personal matters at the moment, in addition to my usual duties as house leader.” She slices a glare at Dimitri. “I hope you would understand.”

Dimitri stiffens up against the back of his chair. “Yes, of course,” he says quickly, with no real meaning, just empty compliance.

Light footsteps approach through the grass behind her. She rises from her seat in anticipation of Hubert’s arrival. He _was_ watching.

“If either of you would be so kind as to let Ingrid know I would be happy to discuss things over tea with you again, provided she is actually in attendance, herself,” Edelgard says as her final adieu, before Hubert leans over her shoulder and murmurs loudly into her ear that Professor Hanneman has made room in his schedule for a private lesson in black magic if she can attend at a moment’s notice. She nods, and the two of them stride out of the courtyard. Hubert usually shortens his paces to accommodate her leg length, but this time, she matches his footfalls instead. The quicker they are out, the better.

Once they make it to a vacant hall within the monastery’s main academic building, Hubert turns to her. His face is impassive, serious, perhaps cold to those who don’t know better, but she sees the warmth of his certain sort of kindness in his eye. “Where to, Lady Edelgard?” he asks quietly.

Edelgard sighs, feeling the frustration of the encounter pricking wetness at the corners of her eyes at long last. She hopes it didn’t bleed into her voice. “My dorm room,” she requests.

He touches a hand to her shoulder. She knows he doesn’t have to; he learned how to cast a warp on another person without touching them nearly a year ago, as long as he is in close enough range. But he puts the hand there anyway, and holds it for a second, before they swish out of the hallway and back home.

That touch is all she gets before he bows deeply, then takes his leave. He is kind, and their relationship is closer to that of siblings than anything else Edelgard knows, but that he doesn’t know how to stay with her right now is what distinguishes him from a brother.

It’s been over five years. She is now eighteen years old, by all measures an adult, and expects to assume control of and expand an empire by the end of this year. She still feels the loss of her brothers and sisters like a missing limb.

She fell asleep last night with her face in her pillow, shedding silent, shaking tears. She didn’t expect to spend the afternoon doing the same. She’s amazed she has any left.


	7. True Neutral

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Byleth's attempt.

Dimitri is doomed.

He notices _well_ before Claude points it out to him, thank you, that the professor has specifically chosen to take along all three house leaders for this special mission while excluding their two most obsessive retainers. Edelgard is without Hubert, and Dimitri without Dedue. Both of the royal heirs are more than capable of protecting themselves, even in the shadowy caverns of the Abyss. The effect that this isolation has, instead, is to make both Edelgard and Dimitri more approachable. To others, and crucially, to each other.

Mercedes _definitely_ talked to the professor.

Edelgard, of course, does not approach Dimitri. She’s already had quite enough non-conversations with him because of the number of people who have tried to slam the two of them together. Sylvain figured out the connection between them at least a month ago and has been whispering to him to talk to her ever since. When Ingrid found out, she began to join him, but she also did what any reasonable person would do in her situation: she asked Mercedes for help. Now Mercedes knows, too, and there’s a chance she passed on at least some of her knowledge to the professor. Claude knows _something_ , probably not everything, but enough to cause a nervous sweat to bead on Dimitri’s forehead any time he comes around. The tea invitation from Hilda flares with warning signals in retrospect. Even Ferdinand’s requests for sparring sessions seem suspect, with how often he would bring up Edelgard’s name between blows.

Yuri is cunning. Balthus is imposing. Constance is many things, but one of them is well-versed in the affairs of noble families. And Hapi stares at Dimitri as if she can see his secrets written on his face.

So that leaves Linhardt and Ashe. The former is treating the latter’s wounds after their latest scrape with invading soldiers from the surface. As their only archer, capable of the longest-range attacks, Ashe often has to draw enemy fire with his bow, and ends up burned, bruised, and bleeding at the end of every struggle. The only thing keeping him alive during battle, much to his house leader’s chagrin, are Yuri’s tricky footwork and white magic. Linhardt, too, is always sure to stay exactly within range of a Physic spell of him, even when the underground passages twist and wind beyond what Dimitri can keep up with even on horseback. Linhardt’s knowledge of the Abyss is greater than anyone else’s from the surface, and he expands it further by spending all his time in the forbidden library, curled up with a book and a pillow and soaking up the knowledge via osmosis.

On second thought, Linhardt is _way_ too smart. He probably already knows everything about Dimitri’s situation, too, and he’s just too lazy to do anything about it.

So that leaves Ashe.

“How are you holding up?” he asks, taking over a bandaging job when Linhardt’s hand comes away from it to cover a noisy yawn.

Ashe startles at his touch. Dimitri has learned that it’s likely not from the pain of agitating an injury, but from nervousness. “Y-Your Highness,” he stutters as every muscle in his body goes rigid against the makeshift chair of crates on which he’s seated. “Please, you shouldn’t—”

“It’s alright, Ashe,” Dimitri says gently, winding the roll around the burned skin on his arm. “As your house leader, it is my duty to ensure your protection and safety. Let me help you.”

“Hey, now. I’m the house leader around here.”

Yuri leans with effortless poise against the doorframe behind them, as if he has been there the whole time, and didn’t just appear in silence within the past thirty seconds, completely undetected. Dimitri is relieved that Ashe jumped at the sudden entrance of his voice, as well.

Linhardt, on the other hand, is entirely unbothered. He rolls lackadaisically to his feet with a stretch and another yawn, asking, “Mmm, so you’ll take over healing, then?”

“Sure. My pleasure,” replies Yuri. He slips inside the door, moving like a dancer crossed with a shadow, to make way for Linhardt to pass on his way out. “Show me where it hurts, Freckles.”

A faint current of red runs through the pale skin under Ashe’s eponymous sunspots when Yuri calls him by that borrowed nickname from Hapi. Dimitri tries not to clench his hands when they’re holding Ashe’s slim, sensitive wrist. It’s a comfort, somehow, that at least _both_ of them are nervous around the one called the Savage Mockingbird.

“I can handle it from here,” Yuri says with a flippant wave, moving towards the purpling-green bruise above Ashe’s knee where a poisoned blade struck him. A timely antitoxin froze the venom in its tracks before it could circulate through the bloodstream, but the infected wound remains. “The professor wanted Your Highness to help out with weapon repairs when you’ve got the time.”

“I’m afraid I don’t have time just yet,” Dimitri says firmly, holding Ashe’s hand closer before he can get any ideas about pulling it away. He knows just how to wind the bandages between Ashe’s small knuckles to preserve the dexterity and range of motion he needs to be at his best with his bow. He eases Ashe’s delicate, but callused fingers apart with his fingertips, pair by pair, to feed the cotton gauze between them. “I seem to be in the middle of something quite important.”

Yuri slides a smirk Dimitri’s way that Dimitri pretends to ignore. “Adorable,” he teases. “You’re living a real-life rags-to-riches story. Tell me, how does it feel to go from life in poverty to being waited on by a cute prince?”

All of Ashe’s limbs seize up, and his face flushes its deepest shade of pink yet. Dimitri can’t keep Ashe’s hand in his grasp without squeezing, and he’s terrified to squeeze, so it slips free.

“I-it’s not like that!” Ashe protests. “Uh, um, Your Highness, you should—if the professor said—”

“And the professor _really_ said,” Yuri warns, raising an eyebrow as if to ask what in the world Dimitri could have done to prompt this much urgency.

By the Goddess, Yuri will _not_ be the eighth damned person to know about this without his permission.

“You’d better get a move on.” Yuri’s sing-song voice is just like that of the mockingbird in his moniker, but the promise after it is heartfelt: “Don’t worry. Your boy’s in good hands with me, friend.”

In spite of the teasing way Yuri refers to Ashe in relation to Dimitri, the assurance sets him at ease enough to give polite thanks as he leaves. He makes his meandering way through the maze of the Abyss until he finds the familiar marketplace. It’s only a few more turns and peeking around corners before he finally sees the shabby rack of weapons and the blacksmith attending them, and…

And Edelgard, of course.

While Professor Byleth stands in the near distance, exchanging weapons, smithing stones, money, and some scarce words with the blacksmith, Edelgard kneels with a lusterless axe and a whetstone. She scrapes away its rust, polishing and sharpening its edge with broad strokes.

Just as Dimitri wonders whether he can sneak away before being spotted, the professor catches his eye and nods him over. The instruction is nonverbal: a sword pressed into his hands, its blade dull, its pommel rattling loose, and its hilt practically disintegrating off the tang. As it is, the sword is completely unusable, but they’re easy repairs, so long as Dimitri can get his hands on a fresh strip of leather for the hilt, a bit of oil, and another whetstone like Edelgard is using.

It should really not come as a surprise that all of these supplies are readily available and they are right next to Edelgard.

Dimitri looks around. There is nowhere else to sit but on the empty crate next to Edelgard. She is avoiding eye contact with him like she also knows that’s the case, and is looking forward to this about as much as he is.

But also, there’s no one else around who deals in the affairs of the surface world. It’s not possible Were these merchants not Abyssians, then any gold that the locals spent would leave their economy, with no other industry to replace it. It would be economically unsustainable. On the whole, the Abyss lacks lucrative resources except labor. Yuri spoke of their poverty, but it’s only now that Dimitri sees where that persistent destitution must come from.

He also said that he takes care of his wolves. Between that and his title as the Savage Mockingbird, Dimitri wonders exactly how scrupulous Yuri’s methods of “care” might be. He thinks of scandals he’s heard of in his political spheres for the sake of money. The Abyssians probably don’t have to pay taxes, considering they’re provided sanctuary by the Church of Seiros, so he can rule out tax fraud.

“Are you going to get to work, or are you planning on willing that sword back to life by staring at it?” Edelgard snaps.

With a jolt, Dimitri comes back to the present, an apology bursting from his lips before he can figure out exactly what he is apologizing for. “I was simply,” he stammers, fidgeting with the damaged sword in his hands, “considering the best way to approach the repairs. I—hope I haven’t caused you any offense, I did not mean…”

Edelgard cuts him off with a sharp sigh, her shoulders slouching as she ceases her polishing for a moment. “If you’re going to apologize for simply _existing_ in my presence, you’re even more weak-willed than I thought,” she mutters. “Overthinking something as trivial as weapon maintenance isn’t a good sign, either.”

Dimitri squeezes his hands around the sword. This is his chance. They are all but alone, other than the professor—whom he trusts—and the Abyssians—whom he trusts not to care. Although her words are discouraging and cold on the surface, he hears her intent. She says these things not to mock him, but to challenge him to be better than his flaws.

“I will have to work on that,” he says as he takes a seat across from Edelgard at the tool rack. “To be honest, I have been worried that you wouldn’t appreciate my being around, considering the… certain conflicts, I suppose I could call it, that we have had.”

Edelgard’s sigh this time is not so sharp, and much heavier. When Dimitri chances a look at her face, there’s something kind in it—exasperated, perhaps, but still kind. “If I’ve made you feel like there was _conflict_ between us, then I should take the blame for that,” she admits. “I… wasn’t at our best, the last time we sat down to talk, and for that I apologize. It’s not your fault Ingrid refuses to talk to me in person and chose you as her messenger.”

On the contrary, it is actually entirely his fault.

“Ah,” he says hesitantly, “about that…”

“Actually, I’d prefer if we _didn’t_ talk about that,” Edelgard cuts in.

Dimitri swallows. “Er, yes. Understood.”

He’s fiddling with the ratty leather of the hilt more than he’s removing it. Ordinarily he cherishes having something to do with his hands while he’s trying to work something through in his head, but his nerves have gripped him so wholly that his hands can’t figure out how to do a task as simple as separating two entwined materials.

He squeezes the hilt hard enough to feel the edges of the tang underneath it. Closing his eyes, he takes in a deep, grounding breath, and says, “I have something to ask you, if you don’t mind.”

The look she shoots him as she continues her sharpening and polishing, leaning into every laborious stroke, can only be called a glare. Any ounce of courage he had summoned withers under her lavender eyes.

It’s right then that, for the first time, he doubts _everything_.

She doesn’t remember him. She doesn’t go by the nickname he remembers calling her—Dorothea calls her Edie, if anything—and she doesn’t recognize the old name she used to call him even when it sits in plain sight. It’s not as if his history as Faerghus’s sole heir to the throne has been scrubbed from the record books. If she were the girl he remembers, then she would remember him in turn, and she doesn’t.

And her hair, by the Goddess. The girl he knew had brown hair.

“Pardon the odd question,” he all but squeaks, “but something has been bothering me for a while now.”

Edelgard’s arm slows. The glare is gone, replaced by something more curious.

“Your hair,” he says, “was it always that color?”

She blinks. She straightens her posture to sit further back, to regard Dimitri in his entirety, and for one blissful second, he thinks maybe she’ll see it.

“That _is_ an odd question,” is what she says. “But, yes. If you must know, it was a different color when I was a child.”

Dimitri’s eyes drift to the space over her shoulder, where the professor has stopped talking to the blacksmith and is now staring at the two of them, wearing… well, the same face as always, which, as always, conveys absolutely no emotions or hints thereof.

He regrets looking back at Edelgard. Her eyes are narrow, and she leans her elbows over the haft of the axe, folding her arms. He hopes for a split-second that she’s putting the pieces together, and he won’t have to say it out loud, and Professor Byleth’s incredibly convoluted scheme to force them together will have worked. But there’s something too icy-firm in her stare that suggests she’s not searching him, but trying to keep anyone else from searching _her_.

“How could you know that?” she demands. “Is it possible that we—”

“Your hair changed color?”

And just as Dimitri realizes that he was an absolute fool for doubting that this Edelgard was his Edelgard when he could see the very dagger he gave her hanging at her waist, Dimitri also realizes he was a paranoid fool for thinking that Professor Byleth had somehow planned the entire escapade into the Abyss for the sake of forcing him and Edelgard to talk to each other. The professor proves him wrong by walking up and cutting into the conversation, voice impassive as always, at the _exact_ moment when Edelgard might have been figuring out the truth.

“It’s… a long story,” Edelgard says.

She looks so familiar in the worst way when she pulls her arms closer to her and tightly curls up her small hands, like the trapped and tired little girl he wanted to save.

But she rises with a strength new to her—or just new to _him_ —and hands the polished, perfected axe to the professor. Sliding a stern look at Dimitri, she says, “Now is not the time or place.”

“Y-yes, of course,” he agrees readily to her turned back as she walks away. “My apologies.”

It’s never the time or place for them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *continues not using pronouns for byleth while repeatedly dabbing at the camera like i'm on the cringe office*
> 
> This is gonna be my last chapter today, but I'm hoping to pump out the last two very quickly, hopefully as days 5 and 7 of trans week! That's 7/20 and 7/22 for those marking their calendars. RIP to the original ideas I had for days 5 & 7, but day 4, as you can see, _really_ got away from me.


	8. Neutral Evil

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Monica's attempt.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hahah, remember when I said there wouldn't be transphobic characters...?
> 
> I forgot about Monica.
> 
> It's very subtle, blink-and-you-miss-it. Nonverbal, even. Just one in a string of ways she tries to mess with Dimitri in this chapter.
> 
> Recommended listening: [Brahms's String Sextet No. 2 in G Major](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mdeT25qWTq0)

Days turn to weeks turn to moons, and Dimitri is still doomed.

Once the disaster in the Abyss was averted and peace was restored, he did not speak to Edelgard again. It’s not as if, aside from that one unfortunate conversation, he really said all that much to her while they were still entrenched in the Abyss, either—some quick words when they were near to each other in combat and needed to communicate strategy, a few hollow pleasantries when silence would have been a more awkward fate to endure.

Ingrid and Sylvain haven’t exactly given up urging Dimitri to talk to her, but the fact that he’s remained obstinate for so long has taken the heart out of their efforts. He’s spoken frankly with Mercedes, who, it turned out, knew nothing of the situation except that Ingrid begged her to convince Dimitri to speak with Edelgard. She still knows nothing of the situation, content to let Dimitri speak in vagueties and hypotheticals when he explained that the matter between him and Edelgard was one that could only be approached when Edelgard chose to meet him halfway. Since then, she has respected their privacy and politely distanced herself from the whole affair.

By the end of the Ethereal Moon, even she must be growing impatient.

A number of Lions clustered at the edge of the hall for refreshments that they have long since finished. It’s Dimitri’s sort of home base for the ball tonight, but he keeps getting whisked away as soon as he rejoins them by girl after girl asking him for a dance. Sylvain can only intervene to save him so many times. The kind of girl who has an interest in Dimitri’s hand usually isn’t the kind to be charmed by Sylvain’s shameless flirting.

“I didn’t think I’d get a single chance to talk to you tonight,” Mercedes says to Sylvain as she and Annette walk up to join their little group, Annette licking powdered sugar from the cream puffs off of her fingers. “I thought you would be, well, on the prowl.”

“Oh, I’m not a hunter, Mercedes,” Sylvain says, stretching his arms up behind his head. “I’m a trapper. I set up camp where I know the prey’s gonna come in.”

He winks and hip-checks Dimitri, who chokes on the water he’s trying to guzzle down before another girl takes him for a spin. Ingrid pounds his back as he coughs, taking the half-empty glass from his hand before he sloshes it all over his dress uniform. He owes every drop of his current hydration level to her, for holding his glass and refilling it all night.

“I think someone else here needs your help more than His Highness,” she says pointedly, jerking her head in gesture to the nearby dark corner where Felix has been sulking all night.

“Nah, he’s got this,” Sylvain says.

The latest in a string of girls, tailed in the distance by two of her friends for support, comes up to Felix and gives a curtsy. He rolls his eyes, folds his arms, and says something brief, before walking a few feet away.

“See? He actually has the guts to turn a girl down, unlike His Highness here,” Sylvain says. “He’ll be fine.”

As with every girl previous, she stands frozen in shock for a moment. Luckily, she has her two friends to console her, tugging her away from the scene of the rejection and towards the refreshments table for some comfort food.

“Your Highness, do you want the rest of this?” Ingrid mutters, holding up his water glass.

Dimitri blinks. “I’m alright,” he says, voice still a bit hoarse from the liquid in his windpipe, and he coughs again to clear his throat. “Why do you a—”

Ingrid rears her arm back, then thrusts it forward to slosh the water in Sylvain’s face.

Annette squeals. Sylvain sputters, wiping his sleeve across his eyes. Mercedes giggles. Dimitri decides that, actually, he would prefer to be out dancing his blistered feet to death with yet another girl right now.

As if on cue, the string sextet accompanying the ball draws out the final note of their current song. The dancers lull to a stop, smiling, bowing, curtsying, and parting. It’s only a matter of time before one of the students weaves their way off of the dance floor towards the beacon of blue over his shoulder.

Meanwhile, Sylvain is dripping with more than water when he glares at Ingrid and grumbles, “Thanks, that was refreshing.”

“Happy to help,” she says back, her voice icier than the water.

“Oh my gosh, _fine_!” Annette yells. From her red face to her fists clenched to shaking, from the high pitch of her voice to the steam coming from her ears, she embodies a boiling tea kettle. “I’ll talk to him!”

The unexpected outburst completely shatters the tension. They figure out who “he” is when she stomps off towards the edge of the ballroom and find Felix in her trajectory.

“I… don’t understand,” Dimitri worries. “Did we do something to upset her? I didn’t think anyone was pressuring her to—”

“Oh, no one was pressuring her,” Sylvain agrees, combing his wettened hair back into place with his fingers. Ingrid presses the side of a fist to her mouth to stifle a laugh. “Don’t worry about it, Highness.”

The music picks up again at a livelier tempo. There’s an emphasis on the first and third beats, more like a slow jig than a waltz.

Edelgard would disagree. What Dimitri considers a waltz, she called a dirge.

Mercedes, too, lights up with recognition. “Is this an Adrestian waltz?” she gasps.

Then Ingrid gasps, and turns to Dimitri with that pitying look he’s been spared from for precious weeks. He dreads the words coming out of her mouth, even though she speaks them softly: “Go ask Edelgard to dance.”

He feels his entire face twist up in a cringe, because she should not be asking that, and she should not even know why to _consider_ that, but she _does_ know, and that is information he wishes she could un-know.

“Why don’t _you_ ask her to dance,” Dimitri retorts.

Her face twists up, too, but more with guilt than anything else. “I never learned the Adrestian waltz,” is her excuse.

“Oh!” Mercedes’s skirt twirls as she turns into their conversation, holding out her hand to Ingrid. “May I teach you? It’s fairly simple, don’t worry—”

Without waiting for an answer beyond Ingrid’s hand placed in hers, Mercedes leads them out onto the dance floor. Dimitri watches them go until the sudden cold weight of Sylvain’s wet arm on his shoulders startles him away.

“Guess I’ll have to teach _you_ the Adrestian waltz,” Sylvain teases. He’s using the lidded-eye look he saves for picking up girls on Dimitri, and even tosses in a wink at the end.

“I am already familiar with it, thank you,” Dimitri says tightly.

“C’mon, no one’s asked you for a dance this round!” Sylvain coaxes, bending the arm slung over Dimitri’s shoulders to draw him closer (and further dampen his jacket). “You don’t have a girl, _I_ don’t have a girl… It’s the bro code, dude. We gotta help each oth—”

“Umm, excuse me, Prince Dimitri?”

Dimitri has never been so excited to hear a girl’s voice in his life. He whirls away from Sylvain, practically throwing the arm off of him, and turns to the cheeky redhead twisting her toe into the floor as she gives him a lazy curtsy.

“I don’t mean to interrupt,” she says with a teasing lilt. “I just wanted to know if I could have this dance with you?”

When she bats her lashes at him, smiling coyly, he lights up with recognition. “Monica von Ochs,” he recalls, bowing in response to her curtsy before he holds out his hand in invitation. “Yes, it would be my delight.”

The sextet is still flitting through their virtuosic intro, meant to give time for dancers to find their next partners and their footing for the new beat, but Monica takes Dimitri’s hand and bounds off as if they’re in danger of missing the first steps. As he is dragged to the center of the dance floor, he shoots a smile over his shoulder at Sylvain, only to find a look he wasn’t expecting on Sylvain’s face. It’s unusually serious, and entirely focused on him, as he moves sideways through the bystanders.

Towards Dedue, Dimitri realizes, but he doesn’t have the liberty to watch more. Monica has found their spot, and draws her hands up for a dance.

One to his waist, the other holding his out to his right side, forcing him into the woman’s side of the waltz.

It’s not a secret. Anyone with noble ties can know his story just by bothering to keep up. He doesn’t understand why it still feels like it can be weaponized against him like this, why his heart drops every time he realizes someone knows about this piece of his public past.

“Oh, whoopsies!” Monica laughs, switching her arms. “Sorry, I was just dancing with Edel. I guess I got used to leading.”

Dimitri forces out a cordial laugh of his own. He fits into position with her like one of them is the wrong puzzle piece, and he’s not sure whether it’s him or it’s her.

His steps are rusty at first. It takes a few bars for memory to replace the tension in his muscles. It’s harder to move himself with the proper lightness of the dance as a man than as a child, but nostalgia invigorates him to try. Monica grins, giggles with delight when he indulges her in a twirl, and he’s smiling, too.

Even when he notices the red cape of the woman dancing in the pair just beside them.

The next turn in the dance’s steps takes Edelgard and Dimitri just about back-to-back for lack of space on the dance floor. He maintains his smile, his breathing, and his rhythm, and everything is completely normal and inconsequential until a quarter-turn later, when Monica is passing by Edelgard in the spin and says loudly enough for them both to hear, “You really dance like an _Adrestian_ , Prince Dimitri!”

Composure flickers and fails on Edelgard’s face. He doesn’t look at her directly, just in his peripherals, but he sees her glance his way.

“What do you mean?” he asks, but he hears it come out much too nervously to feign ignorance.

“Well, you _must_ have had an Adrestian teacher!” she declares. “I’ve _never_ seen someone from the Kingdom who knew how to be so _fluid_. So? Who’s Fhirdiad’s secret political prisoner from the Empire, forced to babysit the prince and teach his dancing lessons?”

Dimitri’s mouth goes dry. He realizes that’s because it’s hanging open soundlessly.

“Monica,” Edelgard cuts in sharply.

Dimitri whips his head around. Edelgard hasn’t missed a beat in the dance even when glaring over her shoulder at Dimitri’s partner. Dimitri has missed several; he tries to catch up.

“I wasn’t aware you had plans to torment the _other_ house leaders tonight, as well,” Edelgard says.

“Aw, Edel,” Monica whines, “I’ve _got_ to gather prime intel on the other nations while we’re all here!”

Dimitri is glad that this conversation apparently does not actually include him. He exchanges a glance with the man unfortunate enough to be sharing this particular dance with Edelgard. They take comfort in their mutual awkwardness.

“I’m just kidding!” Monica snickers. “But _honestly_ , watch him! Someone from the Empire must have taught him. Who do you think it was?”

The problem with the Adrestian waltz is that the male dancer is not the lead. The dancers have to move together to change the trajectory of his steps. If Dimitri wants to move away from Edelgard, he will need Monica’s cooperation, and he does not have it. He doubts Edelgard wants to watch him dance, but he feels watched regardless. Whatever Adrestian fluidity his steps once had is absolutely gone now.

He has a feeling there was none to begin with.

Either the way she nearly started the dance, or the comments she made on his form would, have been innocuous on their own. Together, they are sabotage. With as polite a smile as he can muster, he asks, “Do you think you know something, Miss von Ochs?”

She smirks at him with lidded eyes. They look like they’re made of glass, a doll’s empty replica of eye contact instead of a human’s. “ _Should_ I know something, Mister Prince?” she asks back.

“I think, perhaps, you should not,” he says firmly with the same gentle smile.

Monica’s face shamelessly drops into a scowl. She jerks her head to the side, toward Edelgard, and all but yells, “Hey, Edel, didn’t your mom, like, mysteriously disappear from the Empire a long time ago?”

Balls are only a step away from court proceedings, in terms of the diplomacy and etiquette required to navigate them both. Dimitri shifts from one gear to the other with ease. He puts on a practiced blank face. There’s no need to protect the political safety of a missing corpse, likely four years through rotting in the ocean off the coast of Duscur. But this secret is all he has left to defend of his mother. Monica von Ochs, he has decided, does not get to hold it.

“What are you implying?” he says in a low monotone.

“Yes,” cuts in Edelgard more loudly, and with much more emotion, “what _are_ you implying?”

Dimitri’s political training all falls out of his head when he whips it to the side. Edelgard is no longer dancing. She stands facing them head-on, her hands balled into fists, her eyes full of fire.

“That my mother, empress consort of Adrestia,” she spits, “decided to defect to the Kingdom to become a dance teacher for princes?”

Dimitri is trying to stop dancing, because this is ridiculous, and he needs Ingrid to give him about three glasses of ice water right now, but Monica keeps spinning him in circles. Every time he tries to step back, she steps forward with him. When he steps to the side, when he turns away, she just follows. Her fingers stay clamped between his knuckles when he tries to let go of her hand.

“Oh, _I_ don’t know,” Monica sings. “Why don’t you ask Dimi, here? _He_ would know.”

It’s a little bit comforting that there’s at least one she doesn’t know about him, even if it’s only the diminutive he uses for his nickname. The rest of him is distinctly uncomfortable. He feels sweat under every inch of his uniform, except for his legs, which he can’t feel at all. Incidentally, he discovers the secret to getting someone to stop dancing with him, which is to stand rooted to one spot, immobile.

He doesn’t know what’s on his face right now. He only sees what’s on Edelgard’s face. Her expression blooms horridly through his silence, from a bud of dense rage, into bitter betrayal.

“Edelgard, I,” he starts feebly.

There are too many eyes on him. There are faces between faces. Flesh rots off of their skulls. A jaw falls off a corpse’s head and hits the floor with a disgusting clack. It’s probably Glenn’s again. Telling him he’s too weak, laughing at him so hard that his bones rattle to pieces, because he’s still too weak.

“I _know_ ,” he mutters back.

“ _What_ do you know?!” Edelgard demands.

The waltz has ended. The rattle transforms back into polite applause for the musicians’ performance.

“Oh!” Monica flits away with a lift of her skirt and a twirl for a curtsy. “Thanks for the dance, Highness!”

And now, Dimitri’s fate is to stand here, alone, in the center of everything, while Edelgard demands answers of him that she doesn’t want to hear, and that he isn’t ready to give. She has been angry in front of him, even angry _with_ him several times now, but this is the moment when anger, an internal feeling, a product of many circumstances converging to become a weapon, turns to hate, a sickening feeling that cannot form alone, that another person must inspire, that _he_ inspires in her.

When she can’t bear to look at him any more than he can bear her gaze, she storms away, yelling Monica’s name.

He can’t even turn his head to follow her. He can’t move. He can’t breathe.

Her abandoned dance partner takes a nervous step towards him. “You, uh… are you alright, Your Highness?” he asks.

“I think,” says Dimitri, “I am going to pass out.”


	9. Lawful Good

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Finally - Dimitri's own attempt.

Dimitri is so, so, so, so doomed.

He does not pass out on the dance floor. He successfully walks away from it, threads through people with _excuse me_ ’s and nudges, and shoves himself through the door. He can only see straight again when the cold winter air hits him. Thinking straight will come later, or not.

In the meantime, he thinks he will just sit right here. He doesn’t know where or what _here_ is, but it’s dark, it’s cool, it’s quiet, and no one else is around.

His father asks to come in. He shakes his head and hopes Lambert can see him through the bedroom door. He doesn’t know why Dimitri won’t speak to him anymore. Dimitri doesn’t know, either.

He’s thirsty.

Someone calls out from far away. “Hey, Mitya!” he says. “You out here?”

He shakes his head through the door. No, Sylvain won’t see that. No, there’s no bedroom door. This isn’t his bedroom. Oh, Goddess, he’s not thinking straight at _all_.

He’s outside, sitting on cobblestones, with his back to the outer wall of some monastery building. When he gets shakily to his feet, he doesn’t see Sylvain. Maybe Sylvain was never there. Maybe Sylvain is dead now, too.

He tries to think of how it happened, the last place he saw him. The ball. Watching Dimitri go out to the dance floor with Monica. Edelgard. Dimitri took Edelgard’s mother, so Edelgard took Dimitri’s friend.

“Mitya!” he calls out again. He’s louder now, maybe closer. No one’s called Dimitri _Mitya_ in years. No one but his dear friends would know him as _Mitya_. Sylvain watched him go out to the dance floor and must have watched him leave it, too. He’s trying to find him with a nickname to keep his disappearance discreet.

“Sylvain?” Dimitri calls hoarsely.

He’s so thirsty.

Sylvain’s feet are pounding closer. Dimitri starts to feel the beat through the ground in his legs—oh, he’s sitting again. He doesn’t remember that happening. It’s alright. Sylvain can help. He’s a clown and a flirt, but when it comes down to it, he’s the oldest brother of the four childhood friends from Faerghus. He isn’t fazed. He’s an anchor, he’s elastic, he smiles and figures out what to do next.

“Hey, Highness,” Sylvain says gently, and he’s sitting right beside Dimitri now. “You good?”

“Could I have some water?” Dimitri asks weakly.

“Yeah, I got you, just wait a little. I told Dedue to get some water and meet us out here. Alright if I step away to flag him down here?”

Dimitri blinks, frowns. “Step… away?” he repeats. “Of course, why would…?”

Sylvain leans forward onto his knees and stays there a moment. He gives Dimitri a sad, fond smile. “Just checking,” he says, then he pushes himself up to his feet. Before he steps away, he sticks his hand into Dimitri’s hair and gives it a rough tousle.

Things are quieter when Sylvain leaves. Dimitri didn’t notice the unsettling nonsilence, crackles of wild flames, echoes of faraway screams, the clangs of weapons and armor, until it was gone. He runs his own fingers through the hair Sylvain mussed, setting it back into place, slowly, methodically, feeling the way each strand of hair feels at his scalp.

“Your Highness,” says Dedue, steady as a rock. He holds a glass goblet of ice water at Dimitri’s eye level.

Between the two solid presences at his sides, Sylvain and Dedue, everything feels safe, and so everything falls apart. When Dimitri reaches for the water, his hands tremble. He struggles to cup it in his palms without Dedue holding it steady, guiding it to his lips. The rim of the glass burns with sudden cold against his flesh and he flinches. A small cascade of icy cold spills down his chin.

Dedue has a napkin ready in his other hand and presses it to Dimitri’s face to catch the drips. His frown deepens. “You’re warm,” he says. “Are you feeling feverish?”

“Feverish—no,” Dimitri says, taking the napkin from Dedue to save himself the dignity of mopping up his own mouth. “I… I may be overheated, but I don’t feel ill.”

He unbuttons the neck of his dress jacket. Cool air whips up all the sweat at his collar. It feels like relief, so he undoes the first two clasps beneath that, too. Sylvain takes his wet napkin off of his hands and drops it on the back of his neck, and—oh. That was a good idea. The chill literally runs down his spine.

“S’all good. We’ll just hang out here a while,” Sylvain says. “No danger of overheating out here, that’s for sure.”

“Please drink if you can, Your Highness,” Dedue says, holding out the goblet tentatively—there’s still more than half a glass left. “You may be dehydrated.”

“With how much Ingrid had him drinking?” Sylvain raises an eyebrow. “I doubt it.”

Dimitri’s hands are steadier now. He takes the glass carefully into his grip and tilts it back to drink. Water is comforting to him. It’s one of the few things that still tastes like it used to, even if that’s like nothing. This water feels like it glides over his tongue without wetting it, but it forms a cold pool in his stomach. Dedue makes that face of his that isn’t a smile, but it is. Dimitri makes his own face back, one that is a smile, but it isn’t, but maybe Dedue doesn’t know that.

“Better?” Dedue asks.

“Better,” Dimitri says. He thinks maybe he’s lying. He’s not sure.

“Did you talk to Edelgard?” Sylvain says in a low voice.

He can hardly remember. He thinks so, but he doesn’t remember any words they said to each other. “Sort of,” he manages.

“About… everything?”

His throat feels dry. There’s still ice in the glass. He holds it with both hands so it will melt faster and become more water to drink.

“No,” he says.

Sylvain lets go of a heavy, beleaguered sigh.

“I’m sorry,” Dimitri says, clutching the cup tightly. He focuses on keeping his grip from getting too firm. He hasn’t shattered a glass from holding it before, but everything feels a touch away from shattering now, most of all himself.

Sylvain presses a hand to the wet napkin on Dimitri’s neck. “Don’t be,” he says. “I don’t know what this is like for you, Mitya. It’s… harder than anything I can imagine.”

It’s the first time Dimitri’s heard that. He feels a little less small and stupid when Sylvain calls it hard. Sylvain, who had to hear about Professor Byleth’s class being assigned the task of killing his brother, who coped by begging to join the assassination party. He thinks this is harder.

Dimitri drops the glass into his lap before he can break it. The ice spills out over his legs.

“I see Ashe approaching,” says Dedue. “He may be looking for Your Highness. Would you prefer he stay away?”

“No,” he says before Sylvain can make it to his feet to play bouncer. “It’s alright. _I’m_ alright. I don’t need you to coddle me like this.”

Sylvain looks down at the ice slowly seeping into Dimitri’s pants. He doesn’t say anything, and maybe he has the kindness not to think anything, either, but Dimitri hears the implication anyway.

“Sylvain? Dedue?” calls the familiar, timid voice. Then: “Your Highness!”

Dimitri quickly scoops the ice off of his legs and back into the glass, holding it upright like some halfway respectable prince, even if he can’t make it to his feet. He doesn’t want to ruin the bold brushstrokes of the royal portrait Ashe sees when he looks at Dimitri.

“Is everything alright?” Ashe pants as he rushes close. “Um, I brought… oh.”

In his hand, a mirror of Dimitri’s, is a glass of water. His has the advantage, however, of being still full. His arm droops when he realizes he was not the first to have this idea, but Dimitri lifts up his empty hand eagerly, whispering, “No, please, thank you.”

“How’re things in the hall?” Sylvain asks as Dimitri downs his second glass.

“A little… dramatic, I guess,” Ashe says, scratching his head. “I mean, everyone is getting on just fine, but… well, it didn’t go unnoticed, if that’s what you’re asking. That’s what I mean.”

Dimitri winces. He stops drinking to be sure he won’t cough through the water he’s trying to swallow. When Sylvain says the thing he was thinking, “That means we’ll probably see Ingrid or Mercedes out here, next,” Dimitri presses the glass back to his lips.

“At this rate, we are going to crowd His Highness,” Dedue says ominously.

“I am not being crowded,” Dimitri insists. “I assure you, I am alright now. I feel much better after having some water.”

Ashe lights up when he says this. He crosses his thumbs over each other and back between his clasped hands which have done a good deed by carrying water. Dimitri smiles without trying and it makes his whole face feel better.

He’s back on his feet by the time Mercedes and Ingrid find the group, and they have dragged along Professor Byleth. Luckily, the professor is content to exchange a thumbs-up with Dimitri to assure his wellness, before collecting his two empty glasses to ferry back inside. Ingrid fusses over his uniform. “Did any of you happen to see where Edelgard went?” Dimitri asks before the professor departs.

“No, we only heard about the whole thing afterwards,” Mercedes says. “I didn’t see Edelgard at all. Ingrid, did you?”

Ingrid lowers her head before she shakes it, absently smoothing out Dimitri’s lapels. The professor adds, “I don’t think I’ve seen her, either,” before politely edging out of the conversation and back to the main hall.

“I—I saw her going after the girl His Highness was dancing with,” Ashe reports when no one else speaks.

“Yeah. Monica,” Sylvain mutters. “Did she start that whole thing, Dimitri? Knew she was up to no good. I told Dedue, get ready to be a bodyguard, because she’s up to no good.”

“She—” Dimitri makes sure to swallow fully before he tries to speak more. “She knows. Things that she should not.”

“Things you were gonna tell Edelgard,” Sylvain says. He swears when Dimitri nods.

“ _What_ were you going to tell me?”

And, well, isn’t that just it, wasn’t this night just going swimmingly enough, that when the final two members of the Blue Lions join the cluster it’s because Felix and Annette are here to lead Edelgard directly to the heaping, bubbling mess that is Dimitri already, and he feels himself disintegrating into something even more rotten.

Ingrid vanishes. By the time Dimitri looks at anything else other than two piercing lavender eyes and a cape of red, she’s already gone. He wishes he had her talent for vanishing anytime Edelgard appears.

“Uh,” blurts Annette, small and curling up even smaller beside Edelgard, “sorry, Your Highness, is this a bad time? She just, she asked where you were, and, well, I saw Mercie head this way—”

“Now is kind of a bad time,” Sylvain says, slinging an arm over Dimitri’s shoulder.

He’s grateful for the protection, but at the same time, he hates it. He hates needing it. He hates the self reflected in Edelgard’s eyes that go wide with fury at the same time that her nostrils flare.

“It has been a bad time for six moons, Dimitri.” She enunciates every syllable with deadly precision. “I’m not going to wait around until graduation for you to _talk_ to me. If you have nothing to say to me now, you can take it to your grave, for all I care.”

He wonders where Felix’s boar is now. He wonders if Felix is wondering where his boar is now. He can’t decide what’s more disgusting, when he loses himself to rage, or to fear. He thinks he can see more hatred in Felix’s eyes now than he’s seen ever before.

Her red cape flares out as she turns to leave. He feels her warning in his bones, in the bones of everyone he’s ever let die. Sylvain says that this is hard, but it is not impossible. It is hard, and it will be hard, and he will just have to do a hard thing.

“Edelgard,” he forces out, and it sounds ragged in his throat. “I will speak now, if you would hear it.”

She does not react immediately, other than to stop walking. She curls the hand by her side into a tight fist, then, by the Goddess’s blessing and against all good judgment, turns back around.

He steels himself with a deep breath. “I warn you that you may need to forfeit much of your night for everything I have to say, if we are to talk here and now.”

She narrows her eyes. “No more excuses, Dimitri,” she says. “You can have all that’s left of my night, since you’ve already ruined it.”

He hears a pained hiss beside him from Sylvain. He means to ignore it, but it calls to his attention the presence of every single Blue Lion surrounding him (sans Ingrid).

“Right.” His voice cracks through the word. “Shall we, ah, move to somewhere with more privacy, perhaps?”

It’s a funny thing, reconciling oneself with one’s location when one has no memory of getting there. Dimitri looks around with the intent of identifying his surroundings for the first time and finds himself standing just in front of the wing walls of the monastery’s great bridge. He can’t be sure which side of the bridge he’s on until he watches his classmates head one direction, and figures the cathedral must be in the other. He takes a step towards it, then looks to Edelgard for approval.

By the looks of her face, she does not approve of anything that’s happening right now. But she follows when he takes the next step.

The pacing calms his mind. He keeps his voice low, out of reach of the stargazers lining the bridge, when he murmurs, “I have a very complicated story to tell you, and one of the troubles is that I do not know where to start.”

“Start with my mother,” Edelgard demands.

In all the thousands of times he ran through this very scenario in his head, that was probably the last place he was planning on starting.

Before his terror can spike, Edelgard lets out a shuddering sigh and scrubs her face with her hands. “Excuse me,” she says quietly. “I… I’m afraid I let what Monica said earlier get to me. But if… if there is anything you know about what happened to my mother, please, tell me.”

When she raises her face from her hands, Dimitri sees something of the little girl he used to know still living there. She’s tired, but strong, but tired of being strong. He realizes after his hand is already in the air that he is trying to put his arm around her shoulders, and snaps it back to his side.

“These are,” he says warily, glancing at the bridge’s bystanders, “highly guarded political secrets, you understand.”

She purses her lips. Her breathing quickens at a rate disproportionate to how much she lengthens her strides to get to privacy faster.

The cathedral is silent and empty at this hour, on this night. The instant they pass under the arch that separates the foyer from the sanctuary, Edelgard says, “Tell me everything you know, and give me a good reason for why you didn’t tell me sooner.”

“There are reasons, none of them good. I will not try your patience with excuses,” Dimitri says, shaking his head as he slows to a trudge down the aisle between the pews. “Your mother sought asylum in the Kingdom during the power struggles in the Empire, just as you and your uncle did.”

Edelgard’s eyebrows twitch together in a frown. “How do you know about—?”

“That will come later,” Dimitri says. Then he frowns. “Or… should it come now? As I said, I don’t know how to tell this story.”

“If there’s more about my mother that you know, then tell me that,” Edelgard says.

He knows so much about her mother. He closes his eyes slowly, tries to think of her smile as it was, and not as it is in his visions.

“She remarried in the Kingdom,” he says, because that is not false, and things are already tense enough without explaining exactly _whom_ she remarried. “It was… kept secret, for political reasons, you see. I know that she spent her last years happy and loved.”

“Her last years,” Edelgard repeats. Her voice is hollow.

Dimitri inhales and turns to face her fully. “I am sorry, Edelgard,” he says solemnly. “As I know it, she passed away more than four years ago. They say she lost her life in the Tragedy of Duscur.”

Edelgard steps to the side of the aisle slowly. She rests her hand on the back of a pew, then slowly lowers herself to sit in it. Her eyes are unmoving, but they are not empty; they are full of the thick fog of grief. Her voice is even thicker than that when she speaks.

“Why was she in Duscur?” she asks.

“I have… asked myself that, many times,” Dimitri utters. “The Kingdom made an error in judgment on that day, and paid dearly for it. I swear I will make the ones responsible pay dearly in recompense, for the sake of my family, my friends, and your mother as well. Mark my words.”

Edelgard does not seem to be marking his words. She is lost in her own thoughts.

“When did she defect to Faerghus?” she asks in that same, hollow voice as before. The only way she can make it through this conversation is with detachment.

“Some time before you arrived,” Dimitri says, and before Edelgard can cut in, he continues, “I do not know why you were not told of each other’s presence. I would have liked to have known you were her daughter, when I met you.”

“ _You_ met me.” She rises from the pew to stare him down. “When I was in Fhirdiad. When my hair was still brown.”

“You probably would not remember me. I understand,” Dimitri says with a sheepish smile. “I’ve… changed quite a bit since then, I’m sure of it.”

“I would think I would remember meeting a prince more than a prince would remember meeting a foreign dignitary’s daughter,” she says, bearing down on him step by step across the aisle, “and yet _you’re_ the one who recognized _me_ , a decade later, with an entirely different hair color.”

The backs of his knees hit the pews behind him as he leans away from her intense approach. “You never met a prince,” he explains. “You met Sacha.”

In a blink, the interrogative aggression falls away from Edelgard’s eyes. It takes another blink for recognition to replace it.

Dimitri inhales deeply enough to puff out his chest. It’s now or never.

“If I may share something personal with you,” he says stiffly, but proudly, because he gets to say this in his own words. “Edelgard, I am transgender. I spent much of my childhood living as a girl, but I have chosen to live out the rest of my life as a man.”

“You were that—that child,” she says slowly. “You were Sacha.”

“I _am_ Sacha.”

He is Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd, but he is also Sacha. He has always been Sacha. When Sylvain first called him Mitya, he had to hide his tears of—something, something between joy and gratitude and overwhelming validation—but Sacha is still his special name, the one he could wear as male or female in that terrifying period where he did not know which he was. Sacha is so sacred to him that he kept Alexandra as Alexandre even after he chose the new name Dimitri.

Dimitri is Sacha, and Edelgard is…

“El,” he whispers.

Even the vaulted ceilings of the cathedral cannot catch that secret name, quiet as he says it. But Edelgard hears it, and the taut strings holding her together start to snap. Her eyes do not blink until it’s too late, and they blink over tears, and the hands she was lifting towards him have to pull back to cover her face. Dimitri doesn’t mean to laugh, but something about the whole thing is so silly. Then the sound comes out of his mouth and he realizes it sounds more like a sob. When he blinks his own eyes, they come up watery.

“You knew my mother,” she chokes out, part accusation, part plea, all wrecked by the emotion clawing her throat that Dimitri can feel just as painfully in his own. “I _know_ you knew her, I know Sacha knew her. Who was—who did she—?”

“Please don’t be angry,” Dimitri croaks, and he tries to laugh at the pitiful sound of his own voice, and at how silly this all is, even if it’s heavy in his body and painful in his eyes. “I thought you would—resent me for stealing her from you, or—she was my mother, too, El. I know how—how precious she was.”

Edelgard lets only a single sob come from her chest all night, and it spills out here, and rings through the ceilings of the church. Dimitri is weaker; he has many more to go. He sucks in the first half of one in a desperate gasp as she sinks her fingers into her scalp, hooks them around her hair, and pulls.

“Dimitri,” she can barely say.

He takes a step closer, tentatively, his arms raised open, in case neither Sacha nor El has outgrown the way they used to hold each other.

“I am still Sacha,” he offers weakly.

They haven’t.

She lunges for his chest, buries herself in it, fully grown and yet so much smaller than she used to be against him. He circles his arms around her and tries to be gentle even when his heart wants to squeeze her with all his strength.

“I thought this part of me was dead.” Her fingers make hooks in his back instead of in her hair now. “I thought it died with—the rest of my family.”

“You have family in me,” Dimitri tells her. “We are stepsiblings, El.”

“Sacha, I had—” She gasps before she can speak again. “I had ten brothers and sisters. I lost them all. I lost them _all_.”

He can’t help the way his arms tighten when he hears her say that. Her next gasp is more strained.

“My whole life, I’ve lost my family to these people,” she says. “Sacha, you’re all I have left. I thought I lost you, too.”

“You’re all I have left, too, El,” Dimitri weeps, turning his face into his own arm to keep the tears from falling into her beautiful white hair.

“Because you lost everyone, too,” she whispers.

She’s still for a moment, quiet but for her shaking breaths. It’s with unexpected conviction that she suddenly raises her head and steps back to hold him at arm’s length.

“Sacha, there are things I need to tell you,” she says. “Even more complicated than everything you’ve told me. I can’t tell you anything here, or now, but we need to talk. Tell _no_ one what happened here. For now, I just need you to stay away from Monica von Ochs.”

A leftover tear spills onto Dimitri’s cheek when he blinks vacantly. “What?”

“Just _trust_ me. We need to get back to the ball,” Edelgard says, wiping her eyes on the back of her hand. “Fuck. Are my eyes smudged?”

There is a grey smear on her glove, and her eyes look like, well, eyes. He doesn’t know what he’s looking for. He’s still reeling over the fact that she says “fuck” the exact same way she used to, under her breath to maintain a certain dignity, but with the absolute conviction that comes with knowing she deserves the dignity of being allowed to say it.

She rolls her eyes, but there’s no malice to it, despite the little groan she attaches to it. “You always were hopeless with things like this,” she says. “We’ll return to the hall separately. I’m going to freshen up in the restroom. We”—she points between the two of them with an icy look in her eyes—“are not allies yet, and we may never be, so _act_ like it. We never spoke.”

Though his heart clenches and sinks, he nods. Familial ties mean nothing more than what one makes of them. If this means nothing to El—to Edelgard—he is prepared to respect that, and to maintain his distance.

Edelgard catches the forlorn look in his eyes and breaks character. Her stern look cracks into a fond smile. “I’ll send correspondence to Sacha soon,” she promises. “Just one more night as an only child, Dimitri. Dry your tears and dance to celebrate it.”

With that, she strides the path out of the cathedral, away from the Goddess’s altar, to which Dimitri looks to give what he does not yet know will be his last prayer. It is silent thanks for bringing them together again. He will never thank Her for anything ever again.

He wipes his hands across his cheeks and makes his own slow way out of the church.

A great distance ahead, the long shadow of Hubert has joined Edelgard’s side. He appeared quickly enough that he must have been listening to the entire conversation. He’s quiet when he says, “Do you really think this is wise, Lady Edelgard?” but the night is quieter.

“No,” she answers after a beat. “I don’t think so at all. But I feel better about this than anything else.”

Dimitri slows his steps even more, but he doesn’t think Hubert and Edelgard say anything more to each other as they cross the bridge back to the main hall.

His eyes must still be red from crying when he sidles up to his Lions again, because everyone looks at him in horror when he calls out a hello to them.

“You good, Highness?” Sylvain asks outright, cutting through the circle to stand by him. He lifts Dimitri’s head with a hand to look into his eyes, searching for tears.

“I am fine, please,” Dimitri says, batting his hand away. “The wind on the bridge has gotten quite nippy. I thought I would come inside to warm up.”

“Do something about your thermoregulation. It’s abysmal.” Even Felix is there, and even he seems to care a little bit, even if he won’t make eye contact.

“Did you talk to Edelgard about everything you needed to?” Mercedes asks gently.

“Your Highness, I’m really, really, really sorry about that!” Annette folds herself in half so deeply she could touch the floor with her palms if her hands weren’t pressed together above her head, begging his forgiveness. “I didn’t know you weren’t feeling well, I didn’t know anything at _all_ was going on, I just thought she—”

“Annette, please, it’s alright.” Dimitri holds his hands under her arms to nudge her back upright. “I am glad for every push I was given. All of you—” He looks around at the many among them who had a large hand in all of this coming together: Sylvain, Ingrid, Mercedes, then further out into the crowd for the yellow capelet of Claude, Hilda entertaining a dance with Ferdinand, the watchful shadow of Professor Byleth. “I cannot thank you enough for any help you might have given me in getting to this day.”

He supposes Monica also helped, and perhaps she helped most of all, considering her efforts had the stepsiblings talking to each other within the hour, but he does not want to think about that. Edelgard told him to stay away from Monica, and he is happy to oblige.

“I think you have yourself to thank most of all,” Mercedes says with a warm, bright smile. “To be honest, I’m still not really sure what it was that you had to tell Edelgard, except that it was very difficult. So I’m proud of you for that!”

“Not getting a dance with her, though, huh?” Sylvain mutters with a sympathetic little upturn of his lips.

Dimitri shakes his head. “I think it would be best if I did not,” he says. “Although—Ingrid! Now that I have spoken to her, does this mean you will finally ask her to dance?”

He can guess that her answer will be no before her face finishes the sequence of wild expressions it is cycling through: first surprise morphs to something pale and terror-stricken, then floods red with embarrassment, and then tightens with confusion as she tries to speak. “Wh… what do you _mean_ , now that… _What?_ ”

“Wasn’t that your condition?” Dimitri wonders, frowning. “That you wouldn’t pursue a relationship with Edelgard until I had spoken to her about…”

“Because—because I thought _you_ were going to—” She gestures at him. He has no idea what she means. “She was your—! You gave her a _dagger_ , she _remembered_ you, I thought you—”

“But she turned him down, Ingrid, so she’s fair game now!” Sylvain cut in. “I told you, she basically said to me that she only likes girls, I _told_ you Dimitri was never in the game.”

“She _literally_ told _me_ that she wasn’t _sure_ if she only liked girls,” Ingrid said back.

Around this point, Felix scowls and walks away. He is making a good choice.

“You… you thought,” Dimitri realizes with horror, “that I was… romantically interested in her?”

Sylvain and Ingrid look at him like he’s an idiot. Maybe he is, but if he is, then so are they.

“You told us all about how much you liked this girl you met in the capital when we were kids,” Sylvain says. “You wouldn’t shut up about her. You gave her a dagger. We _all_ remember the dagger incident, Dimitri.”

“We were friends!” Dimitri protests. “We were _children_ , Sylvain!”

“ _We’re_ friends, you never gave _me_ a dagger!” Sylvain shoots back.

“You never left the Kingdom to live out the rest of your life in the Empire!” Dimitri points out. “Ingrid, Goddess, why didn’t you _tell_ me this was about—”

“Why did you think I wanted you to talk to her, if it wasn’t about—?!”

“Oh, we really spoiled this whole batch of cookies, didn’t we?” Mercedes says lightly to herself.

“Ingrid,” Dimitri says, summoning all of his authoritative might into his voice. “For many months, you have urged me to speak with Edelgard, no matter the hurdles of shame in my way, and I thank you for your conviction. It is with the same conviction that I ask you to brave your own obstacles and speak to her, in return.”

Ingrid’s face is so bright red, she’s glowing. “I… I am _not_ going alone,” she states. “You need to back me up, Your Highness. She’s not going to listen to me.”

“Oh, I think she will,” Mercedes says with a smile.

“And I’m afraid I’ve been forbidden from speaking with her for the rest of the night,” Dimitri says with a wide smile.

He hasn’t seen Ingrid so flustered in years. “I’m _not_ going alone,” she all but squeals.

“I’ll go with you, if you’d like!” Mercedes offers, clasping her hands together.

“No.” Ingrid whips an arm out to point at Sylvain. “This is _your_ fault, for never shutting up about that _stupid_ dagger story, and _you’re_ coming with me to explain this to Her Imperial Highness.”

Sylvain’s eyes go wide. “If I die, my blood’s on your hands,” he tells her.

“And,” Ingrid adds loudly, ignoring him, “if His Highness isn’t actually interested in a relationship with Edelgard, and now _I_ have to go talk to _her_ , then _somebody_ —and I’m not naming names here, but they know who they are—somebody needs to ask something right now while the music’s still playing!”

Even with all her exasperation, it comes out sounding like a taunt. Sylvain lets out a deep, long “ _oh_ ” that trails off into dark laughter. Ashe’s pale face turns a sweet pink and his jaw drops, first at Sylvain, then at Ingrid. “You said you wouldn’t tell!” he squeaks, curling his arms around his middle.

“I didn’t tell anything!” she says a bit too smugly. “I said I wasn’t naming names, and I didn’t. It’s not my fault if you’re obvious enough for everyone else but His Highness to notice.”

Ashe flushes redder, darkens even more when he turns and finds everyone’s smiles on him. His Highness is noticing now.

“That’s enough, Ingrid,” Dimitri says, unable to suppress a smile of his own, but he doesn’t burden Ashe with the weight of his eyes just yet. “I will not allow you to delay this further with any more of your distractions. Sylvain, please escort Ingrid to meet Her Highness, and behave in a manner representative of our country.”

Sylvain smirks and bows, saying, “Emotionally stunted and repressed as hell? I’ll see what I can do, Your Highness.”

Ingrid elbows him in the stomach when he rises from the bow. She covers her face and peers between her fingers as she turns away, her normally confident stance withered and destroyed. Sylvain puts an arm around her shoulders and gives her a quick squeeze of a hug, guiding her way through the hall to find Edelgard.

“Now then,” Dimitri says, and he lets his eyes settle on Ashe’s soft face, the color not yet fully faded from his cheeks. “Ashe, could I be so bold as to ask you to share a dance with me?”

And all the color flushes back. “Y-Your Highness, I’m sorry, I never meant for,” Ashe stammers, waving his hands frantically and shaking his head, “you really don’t have to—”

“If you would enjoy it,” Dimitri says gently, “it would make me very happy to dance with you tonight.”

He bows deeply and holds out his hand, only lifting his head when he feels the tentative touch of Ashe’s fingers against his palm.

He asks, but Ashe is content to follow while Dimitri leads in the dance. It’s by far his favorite dance of the night, made even better when he sees Ingrid’s thick blonde braid spin opposite Edelgard’s red cape.

Edelgard’s and Dimitri’s eyes meet, and El and Sacha smile at each other.

Tonight, they rule the dance hall. Tomorrow, they will discuss, together, how to rule the world.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And then they destroyed the Church of Seiros and graffitied the cathedral with "FUCK CRESTS" and killed Arundel and lived happily ever after. The end.
> 
> Dimiashe actually happening instead of being a subtext thing was a surprise to all of us, most of all me. I didn't know if I was gonna be able to fit more of it in so I didn't tag it, but ya boy's got a crush on the prince and I think he's valid. If there's any timeline where Dimiashe deserves to be canon it's a timeline where Dimitri turns on the Church. Get some, my little man.
> 
> Thanks for reading!! Have a wonderful day!! Dimitri Fireemblem trans!!!!


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